


Homecoming

by mylittleskeletons



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Childhood Friends, Depression, Ex-Airman Shiro, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Keith likes the Beatles, M/M, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Romance, SHEITH - Freeform, Slow Burn, VERY brief implied/referenced drug use, past sheith, police officer keith, possible trigger warnings, side pairing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2018-12-31 17:33:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 53,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12137583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylittleskeletons/pseuds/mylittleskeletons
Summary: It's been six years since Shiro has been home. Honorably Discharged from the US Air Force and hosting more internalized disdain for the government and life than what he started with, Shiro is advised a trip home to a life he doesn't believe he has a place in anymore.Keith agrees and takes it upon himself to ensure that Shiro never forgets.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to the lovely Sochan for commissioning this wonderful thing! I enjoyed writing this for you loads and can't wait to get started on the next chapter. <3
> 
> Beta'd by me, all mistakes are mine.

The vast plains of beige sprinkled with the occasional splash of green was both a welcome and weary sight for Shiro. He went from a dull, dry heat that robbed his mouth of moisture for days to a city so populated and alive that Shiro still had a hard time preventing himself from dissociating while trying to buy milk.

Shiro started off with a nice, one-story house in the suburbs with a neat lawn. He paid a mortgage and ate his dinner on the back patio every night at five pm sharp. He didn’t stay there for long after going into shock the first time he tried to mow the lawn and nearly cut his own foot off. He packed his belongings and moved. A two-story apartment was the second and much better choice despite having a neighbor within arm’s-length, but that was a sacrifice he was more than willing to make. It was more of a hindrance than a necessity in the end. He had taken the top floor and lawn care was stripped from his roster of duties.

But now that apartment was hundreds of miles behind him, stripped empty and fading away into the atmosphere and the recesses of his mind. Not that he gave the place much life to begin with. Now, he was heading back to a heat much less intense than the one he spent the past four years becoming accustomed to, a heat with more dirt and gravel than saturated green.

Shiro never really liked the colour green anyway.

_“Maybe you should take a trip back home,” his therapist said. “It might be good for you.”_

Home.

_A bullet in a loaded revolver, cocked and ready to pierce through an unsuspecting skull. A word overflowing at the brim and soaking him in an amalgam of emotions he didn’t want to deal with, didn’t want to recognize as his own._

_Home was the warm desert air that singed the insides of your lungs during the day and cooled during the starry night; home was the overwhelming sensation of victory and euphoria of stealing the final touchdown of the last senior game; home was the promise of a crooked, boyish grin and gentle laughter that seared Shiro like cattle._

_A home Shiro threw way the moment his foot crossed the threshold of the gate and onto his plane._

_“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Shiro said._

_“Why not?”_

_“Bad blood.” Only the entire town—no, state—was drenched in it, looking akin to Elizabeth Báthory’s boudoir. He would rather drink a bottle of cyanide than go back._

_“All the more reason to go back,” she said. “Tie up loose ends.”_

The only problem was that those loose ends were cut and frayed too short to mend back together. Shiro didn’t know where to start or if he even could.

Shiro sighed and breathed in the tepid night air, reveling in the wind breezing through his hair. He was almost there, not even ten minutes away. He imagined his parents staying up waiting for him, and he felt guilty for arriving so late but he could place the blame on his nerves. At least he’d be there soon, he called them a few hours ago to let them know his ETA. Shiro barely crossed into the town border and started to see more buildings than vast wasteland when he caught sight of the flashing blue and red lights in his rearview mirror.

Shiro groaned and thud his head back against the headrest.

“Oh, come on.” Just his luck. He pulled off the shoulder of the road and into the gravel. There was no way he was speeding, so what gives? Heaving a sigh, he put the car in park and reached for the glovebox with a dread saturated in annoyance. He hoped this didn’t cost him. Maybe he could charm his way out.

Shiro watched the officer dismount their bike from the sideview mirror, their silhouette blurring behind the lights. Gravel crunched under thick boots as they approached, and Shiro was hit with the sudden nostalgia of the first time he got a ticket. He was seventeen and stupidly in love, both with fast cars and the boy in the passenger seat who could barely contain his laughter when the ticket was dished out. Shiro outgrew his love for the former and tickets fast.

The footsteps stopped right outside Shiro’s window, and Shiro resiseds the imposing desire to sigh until asphyxiation.

“Hey sorry for the pullover, but you have a taillight out. Protocol and all.” The man’s voice was gruff like 60 grit sandpaper, yet it carried a rustic charm that only resided in the backwater town of Colorado. It was nice. “Can I see your license and registration?”

“Yeah, sure,” Shiro said, his earlier annoyance diluting. He held them out to a gloved hand. “Here you—” He looked up and felt his blood turn to ice in his veins. “—go…”

There went his plan of charming.

The dark made it a bit difficult to see, but the man was close enough for Shiro to distinguish a few telltale features that were a trip back to his lively teenage years. The crooked slope of a nose, a result of not a fight for once but a soccer ball to the face at the ripe age of eleven; sharp cheekbones and a jawline to match that a sculptor would weep for decades over; and chapped lips that contradicted the softness Shiro remembered them to be. Although the night swallowed colour, Shiro knew the eyes staring back down on him were rich pools of mauve.

“Keith?” Shiro asked, barely keeping his voice from breaking.

_“Keith. That’s a new name. You’ve never mentioned him before.”_

_“I didn’t think he was worth mentioning.”_

_“And why do you think that?”_

_“He’s my past, and you said I need to move on from that.”_

Keith looked just as shocked as Shiro felt. His lips parted in surprise, lips that Shiro still faintly recalled the taste of. Keith closed his mouth and swallowed. Shiro tried not to let the guilt carve itself a home into his ribs at watching the muscles work. Keith cleared his throat and snatched the papers from Shiro’s grip.

“Shiro,” Keith said. His name on Keith’s tongue was uncanny, as if he was saying it for the first time and didn’t like how it felt. More importantly, Shiro didn’t like how it sounded. “Never thought I’d see you again.”

Keith’s words were clipped and didn’t leave much room for reply. Shiro would even take a wild guess and say that Keith didn’t _want_ him to reply. Keith’s gaze took a nosedive to Shiro’s license, and Shiro briefly wondered if the man’s eyes were drinking in his appearance through his photo. That theory ended up with the litter on the roadside when Keith barely spared the license a glance and instead grabbed the notepad out of his breast pocket.

The old cold shoulder and avoiding contact act. Okay, Shiro maybe deserved that. To be honest, he hadn’t expected much more than this.

“So…cop, huh?” Shiro asked after a beat.

Worst icebreaker ever.

“Yeah,” was Keith’s gruff reply. He scribbled furiously on the notepad to the point where Shiro thought he heard the pen give a warning creak. He romanced the idea of the pen breaking and Keith sinking the shattered plastic into his neck. It erased itself from his thoughts when Keith silently handed back the paperwork and almost smacked Shiro in the process. He still didn’t look up. “So what the hell are you doing back?”

_Ouch._

“Lovely as ever,” Shiro muttered. The brief pause in the pen scratching against paper told Shiro that his comment was heard. He couldn’t bring himself to fully care either at this point. Keith was never known to mince words, but Shiro didn’t plan on them stinging so much. He also didn’t plan on running into the impending bloodbath ten seconds past the town border.

Shiro grounded himself in his tight grip on the steering wheel.

“I’m moving back.”

Keith stopped writing again. His eyes flickered up to Shiro, scanned over the car, and then returned to the notepad.

“Making multiple trips?”

“No, I have everything with me. Don’t have much.”

Keith hummed then clicked his tongue. “Huh. Guess that makes it easy for you.”

If anyone else said it, the words would have been a polite observation. Coming from Keith made it a double-edged sword dipped in rat poison. Still, Shiro bit.

“Why’s that?”

“Less trouble for when you decide to forget this place again.” The sharp tear of paper separating from the notepad made Shiro wince.

Bad blood was an understatement.

Keith handed over the slip of paper, and Shiro took it with an enthusiasm equivalent to a child visiting the gallows. Shiro held it up to his face.

“What’s this?”

“You were going 50 in a 35,” was the curt reply.

“ _What?_ ” Shiro’s voice cracked this time. “I was not.”

“Who’s the one in the uniform here?” Keith snapped back. “Being a marine doesn’t put you above the law. It’s protocol, you understand.”

_Protocol my ass._

Shiro didn't even bother correcting Keith on the branch. He was too busy staring at the offending slip of paper held in his hand.

“You’re kidding.” Keith didn’t bat an eye. “Keith, seriously?”

“Just doing my job.” More like taking out his transgressions of the past six years out on Shiro. “Are you refusing your ticket?”

Shiro floundered. “I—well…” Keith’s eyebrow arched. “No.”

“Good, then go home.”

There was that word again.

Keith pivoted on his heel and headed back toward his bike, but Shiro called out against his better judgement.

“Wait.” Much to Shiro’s surprise, Keith stopped. He didn’t even know what to say. Keith’s back was kept to him, and after a moment of bated silence, Keith huffed.

“What?”

Shiro’s mouth was drier than the desert air. The words fell from his lips with the refinement of chipped gravel. “How’ve you been?”

_Stupid._

Keith remained quiet. Shiro wondered if Keith even heard him over the engine of his car or if he was simply choosing not to answer. Then, the man heaved a sigh that was soaked with years of exhaustion.

“Go see your mom, Shiro. She misses you.”

An insufferable ache spread through Shiro’s chest and squeezed his heart. Keith walked away and Shiro didn’t stop him again. The obnoxious lights shut off, and then no sooner did Keith peel off ahead of him, the motor of the bike echoing into the night until it bled into the chorus of crickets.

Shiro groaned and banged his forehead against the cool leather of the steering wheel.

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

A warm, welcome embrace had been expected from only his parents. Still, he had hoped it would be given by others, Keith especially. It would have been nice.

But that’s all dreams were: nice.

Shiro shifted his car into drive and pulled back onto the road.

Right. Home.

 

 

Parking outside his childhood house was hard. Walking up the wooden steps was even harder. The house was old enough to be a mausoleum overflowing with ghosts in a clichéd horror movie. In Shiro’s eyes, it was haunted. Ghosts of the past running through the halls, kicking up dust of memories both good and bad. They would breathe down his neck at breakfast and loom over him while he tried to sleep. They’d curl their dead fingers over his pillow and smother him.

Shiro mildly hoped they do him in.

The house looked like a wannabe country farmhouse where the original owners wanted the tacky décor without the actual farm. Not that anything could be farmed in the infertile soil. Nothing of good use, anyway. Other houses—much nicer and more modern editions—were built around it, which made it an immediate cheaper listing. Shiro’s parents had jumped on it and purchased when they moved west.

It was the type of house in movies from the 60’s where the front door was in the kitchen and the stairs are so steep it was almost guaranteed to break your neck walking down them at two in the morning—Shiro knew that sudden surge of fear more than the back of his hand. Stepping inside the house was a curse. His mother always had something in the oven, and the scent was enough to make you ascend through the seven levels of heaven. Days ending in football practice were both the worst and the best days, coming home ravenous and being shooed away to wait through to torture but always having a good meal to sate him. Warmth encompassed Shiro, but not just at the memory of warm food.

Lights shined through the two windows flanking the front door, peeking out of the blinds and spilling over the floorboards. Each step Shiro took was heavy and tried to pull his feet through the splintering cracks. At least five minutes were spent of him standing outside before he compelled his hand to grip the doorknob and step inside.

The kitchen was just how he remembered it. The same kitschy cactus pattern wallpaper clung to the walls, faded from age in some spots. Dated appliances and wooden countertops lined the walls in the cozy space.  But most importantly were the two people sitting at the round table in the middle of the kitchen. Their hushed conversation came to an abrupt halt when Shiro walked through the door. He froze, barely passed the threshold with his hand wrapped around the doorknob in a death grip.

Their eyes darted to him faster than a bullet leaving the barrel of a gun. He felt the colour leave his face and circle the drain, mocking him and his pathetic shitshow of emotional constipation. He had stared enemy lines down with far less fear than he exhibited now.

_Get it together._

He used the moment to gather himself and drink in his parents’ appearance.

Age took to them like a bird took to the sky. Time did not do them well, instead stamping them as the poster children for mortality. Grey swallowed his mother’s once luscious brown hair. It was pulled back into a bun, but the flyaways turned it into a disheveled mess. Rich, friendly eyes the colour of brewed espresso have dulled and wrinkles have taken up residence at the corners of her eyelids. The depressions of the cracks were far too deep and plenty to sign off as laugh lines. His father had a matching set with a bonus of worry lines creasing his pale forehead. His hair was a sea of grey, much more far gone than his mother’s.

They embodied years of relentless haunting. The ghosts stayed and fed upon their misery, taking away any chances of reprieve. Now Shiro came back and added one more ghost to the party. Looking at them was a painful reminder that they were the sand in a cracked hourglass.

A knife twisted in his gut at the intrusive thought that this was the first time either had seen each other’s faces since he left. He kept in touch, but he always declined video calls. It was his attempt at softening the blow, he thought it would be easier that way—better—but now all he felt was the marrow-deep guilt of having been so cruel to deny them his face, at denying himself their faces. Hearing their distorted voices from miles away could not have prepared him for this. He was the first to speak.

“Hey, Mom.” His voice was hushed and full of spider web cracks. She looked at him with wet eyes and pushed herself up. The sound of the wooden chair scraping against the floor assaulted his ears and made his skin itch. His mother approached him at a speed that contradicted her weathered state and stopped right before him. His father remained seated at the table.

She was a good foot and a half shorter than him, maybe two. The guilt swelled when she had to crane her neck to look at him even though that wasn’t something he could really fix. She lifted a delicate hand to his face and touched his cheek. The touch was so light that it was borderline ticklish. The fingers traveled over his cheek and to the scar overlapping the bridge of his nose. The sheer gentleness of the touch wa enough to tighten his chest and make it difficult to breathe.

“ _Takashi?_ ” his mother whispered. Hook, line, and sinker. He bowed his head, and she removed her hand only to wrap her thin arms around his waist in a warm hug he didn’t know he missed. He hesitated, his chest hitching, but he allowed himself this much—just this once—and curled his arms around the shaking woman.

There are a thousand things he wanted to say to her, things he would probably never be able to say. But he thought them.

_I love you. I miss you. I’m here._

_I’m sorry._

He looked up and made eye contact with his father. He nodded at him, translating the inner turmoil projected from Shiro’s head without a word. Mouth a thin line and misty eyes shined in the piss poor lighting from the overhanging fan light, he stood up and moved closer as well. He planted a hand on Shiro’s shoulder and squeezed. It was the only thing that kept Shiro from crumbling to the floor.

Shiro schooled himself on a shaky breath and willed his voice to work, but all that came out was a breathless whisper.

“I’m home,” he said. He clutched his mother closer and buried his face in her hair that smelled like lilacs. “ _I’m home._ ”

His mother cried.

_“Can I still call you while I’m there?”_

_“You want to continue sessions?”_

_“I just…if that’s okay, yeah. I’d like to.”_

_Shiro was rewarded with a patient smile that eased the damage of his frayed nerves. “Of course. Call whenever you need to.”_

Later that night, the ghosts haunted him and crept in the corners of his room. They draped over him and stole the oxygen from his lungs. In the morning, he woke—unbearably in one piece and alive.

He called his therapist and booked an appointment for later that week.


	2. Chapter 2

The warmth emitting from Keith’s hands cut through Shiro’s cheeks and melted the marrow in his bones. A smooth thumb glided over his cheekbone in reassuring circles. He wished it was enough to quell the raging war drum in his chest.

“It’s okay,” Keith said.

_It’s not._

“I can’t do it.” Shiro could feel himself breaking, splitting down the middle and cracks branching out until he was a spider web of fractures. With every breath, a part of him shattered into fine dust. He was on the brink of losing his mind, yet Keith was insistent. He tried to look away, but Keith’s guiding hands brought him back to center. Keith shifted closer on the couch until his shin pressed against Shiro’s knee.

“I’ll be there with you,” Keith said. His vast eyes were as stable as they were intense. Their gaze bore into Shiro’s core and attempted to fill the cavity within him. Keith knocked their foreheads together without breaking eye contact. “You can do this. It’ll be okay.”

Shiro breathed in slowly, an earthquake coursing through his chest. He averted his gaze and found comfort in the lack of space between their bodies. He nodded once and reached up, gripping a strong wrist flanking his jaw.

“Okay,” Shiro said. His voice was thick and barely audible, but he knew by the brush of their noses that Keith translated it fine. Keith’s warm hands disappeared from Shiro’s face but the touch lingered. The boy shifted away and stood up from the couch. A pale hand was held out to Shiro who stared at the appendage with far more consideration than was deemed healthy. The single action brought a ferocious clarity to the state of his gradually decaying mind. Shiro swallowed down that self-awareness and accepted the hand in a fierce grip.

Keith led him up the creaky stairs that made sneaking out on weeknights a bitch and near impossible task. They turned the corner and headed toward the door at the end of the hall. Shiro’s heart was running a marathon and he couldn’t keep up. They stopped right outside the door. Keith moved to the side to let Shiro open it when ready, but Shiro wanted to scream to the heavens that he wasn’t ready—would never be ready. But Keith was watching him with a stare full of utter faith and love that Shiro would never be able to forgive himself if he gave Keith one reason to stop looking at him like that.

One thing Shiro knew as fact: he would give Keith the world if he could. This fact wouldn’t change even with him on the other side of this door.

As if reading his thoughts, Keith gave Shiro’s hand an encouraging squeeze that Shiro returned. Steeling himself (read: stalling) with a deep breath, Shiro grabbed the handle of ice with a clammy hand and opened the door.

Darkness soaked the room like freshly ground ink, courtesy of Shiro’s prevailing need for blackout curtains. Opening them now wouldn’t do the room much justice either; the sky was overcast, and the grey filter would only make the room look like a funeral. Perhaps it was fitting. Shiro flicked the light switch on and the room flooded with golden light. He winced at the sudden brightness but took a step forward.

The floor groaned under his socked feet. Shiro’s eyes glanced over the room, drinking in every detail down to the dust particles. The two beds, one on each half of the room, were made without a single fold out of place. Posters lined the walls, shifting in content and style when crossing over the invisible line dividing the room. Shiro caught sight of the Metallica poster on the far wall, remembered hearing the band play constantly through over-blasted headphones for years. At one point, Shiro was sure he had a few songs memorized down to the very beat, but now it was just a distant melody in the recesses of his mind.

Shelves lined the walls, decorated in trophies and medals of various content. They glimmered under the light, though they could use a good polish. Shiro took a step toward it, hand still wrapped in Keith’s, but stopped when he felt something crunch beneath his foot. He looked down.

An F-14 Tomcat model lied crushed at his feet, a result of a fit of bloodthirsty anger that consumed and haunted the walls of this very room. One of the wings was completely broken off and was shattered beyond repair, some of the plastic falling into the fissures of the wooden floor. There was a large crack running down the body of the jet down to the nose. Shiro knelt down to pick it up, but when he touched the model, it crumbled even more.

Shiro ripped his hand from Keith’s and shakily gathered the ruins into his arms, clutching it to his chest. Sharp plastic dug into the meat of his hands and set his nerves on fire, but it only made him tighten his grip. The pain gave his mind false relief, a strange comfort that the sensation was real and acceptable to react. So he gripped harder until his hands turned white and an ache settled in his bones, his skin screaming for reprieve. A sob worked its way from his chest and up his throat, coming out ugly and distorted. Shiro hated the sound of it—how inhuman it rang in his ears—but he couldn’t stop it either.

A gentle hand on his back turned into a comforting presence at his side before he was entirely crushed by it. Soft whispers at his ear tried to ease him, but the suffocating thorn in his chest was growing vines and dissecting his insides. It wrapped around his lungs and squeezed, an invisible pain that he tried to match with the shards in his hands, but it was not enough. It would never be enough.

Shiro reached up and grasped at the arm wrapped around his chest in a death grip.

“He’s gone.” Shiro didn’t even recognize his own voice. Thick and laden with tears, deep and quaking, it only added to the growing layer of disgust he held for himself. He was a mess. “He’s gone and I—”

“I know,” Keith said, his voice strained but he managed to keep his sentences clear. Shiro turned his face into a sturdy chest.

“He’s never coming back.” The hand on the back of his head guided him impossibly closer and into an embrace that tried its best to shield him from the cruelties the world loved to dispense.

“I miss him too,” Keith said into Shiro’s temple. The words took a swing at Shiro’s deteriorating foundation and he crumbled with it, brick by brick until he was left with only the harrowing despair in the pit of his soul that devoured him like a black hole devours light.

He had no light left, only Keith.

 

 

Going back into Shiro’s old room was still hard, even years later. Back in high school when the news was delivered to their doorstep, Shiro refused to step foot back into the room; that was, after his destruction spell. It was a good month of sleeping downstairs on the couch before Keith stepped in and helped him tend to the wound he left writhing with maggots. Then it was another month of Keith sleeping over every night to keep the demons at bay. The only difference now is that Shiro became one of Keith’s exclusive demons.

Every inch of the room screamed of Ryou, so much that Shiro could barely see anything of himself anymore in the periwinkle walls. Ryou’s personality was so potent in the décor that Shiro thought he’d turn his head and see his brother lounging on the bed, the faint hum of some classic rock tune alive on his tongue while he pieced together another jet model. But when Shiro opened his eyes, he was met with nothing but his own solace. It became a guaranteed phenomenon every morning that Shiro started to lock down sections of his mind so he was running on just enough energy for basic function. It presented him with a neutrality that numbed his core and spread through his veins like nightshade. Everything was just a little too much for one time, so Shiro embraced the numbness that he knew his therapist would frown at and mark down as a regression.

It had been four days since Shiro’s homecoming. Four days since his run in with Keith. Two days since he paid that gratuitous ticket. Shiro’s luck was absolute shit.

He was awake since four a.m., lying in bed until the sun peeked over the hills and life bled back into the house. He didn’t move to go downstairs until he was able to smell bacon for ten minutes.

He entered the kitchen with a tired “good morning” that turned into a yawn halfway. His father parroted the greeting behind his newspaper, and his mother smiled at him—the widest he’d seen in ages—and turned back to the stove.

“Food always manages to wake you up,” she said. Shiro simply smiled and walked up beside her.

“Need any help?”

“Now that you mention it, we probably should test the smoke detectors. It has been a while.”

Shiro’s smile dropped. “I’m not that bad.”

“You burn everything you touch,” she said. She clicked her tongue and pointed at the table with her spatula before waving it threateningly at Shiro. “Take a seat.” Shiro raised his hands in surrender and backed up with a huff. He took the seat next to his father, who peered at him over his paper.

“Don’t worry, I still can’t cook to save my life either,” he said.

“Seems it’s genetic,” Shiro mused. He remembered the Christmas cookie incident with a wince. “Do you have anything planned for today?”

“Today is Jason’s birthday so I’m going out with the boys later to celebrate. You’re more than welcome to come with if you’d like.” His father turned the page of his paper. “Other than that, your mother has me on errand duty and the truck has to go to the garage.”

“What for?”

“Oil change.”

“I can do that for you though,” Shiro said.

“Too late, already have an appointment booked.”

“Fine, but I’ll come with you.”

There was a sharp clatter of a spatula dropping against the pan. Shiro looked up as his mother ushered out a flustered apology and became hyperfocused on her cooking again. Shiro averted his attention back to his father, who looked about ready to object the offer, but Shiro added, “Mom’s lists are extensive, I’ll help you with shopping.”

“Maybe if I didn’t have two brick walls of men to feed, the lists would be shorter,” his mother said as she set two plates of food in front of them. Shiro only smiled brightly at her. She looked at her husband. "I think it would be a good idea if he tagged along."

His father looked alarmed. "But—"

"He should get out a bit more. He's been moping inside for days."

"Hi, I'm still here," Shiro said.

Shiro's father looked between the two of them before he sighed. "I do suppose I could use the company."

His mother beamed. "Good." She winked at Shiro and returned to the stove to clean up.

They left a little after noon to take the truck to the garage. It was the first time Shiro had passed through town since his arrival back. He knew the whole point of moving home was to assimilate back into society and make amends, but he was using the excuse of reconnecting with his parents to fulfill the role of a hermit. Not to mention, Keith was now the queen on the chessboard and Shiro was but a crumbling pawn. One bad knock-in with him and it was game over before Shiro even got to play his first move.

The Saturday heat beat down on Shiro’s skin. He idly wondered if he’d regain some of the colour he once had when he lived on the base. Since his discharge, his skin teetered towards pallor. Maybe some sun would do him good.

His father turned the car down a familiar neighborhood, a street Shiro had long forgotten the name of. They pulled up into a driveway and stopped in front of the metal garage door. Shiro took one look at the house and felt his stomach plummet, immediate recognition sinking in. He glanced at his father but commanded his gut to settle. It’d been six years. Maybe the house belonged to someone else now. People move all the time, he would know.

And yet that was possibly the most naïve thought he had since the drive home.

The garage door rolled up and with it went whatever was left of Shiro’s hopes and dreams. A strong arm supported the door, keeping the weight distributed along his shoulder.

“Hey,” Keith greeted with a small smile and nod. “You can pull on in.” His eyes shifted over to the passenger seat and the smile died the second his gaze fell on Shiro. Shiro did his best not to try and recede into the car seat. Keith moved out of the way and disappeared into the garage. Only when he could no longer see the silhouette did Shiro cut his father a look.

“Your ‘appointment’ is with _Keith_?” he asked. His father sighed and rolled the truck forward.

“He’s good with cars. Plus, he’d lecture me again if I went to a mechanic,” his father supplied. Shiro tried not to dwell on “again” or the fact that he hadn’t been around for the first lecture.

“You scared of him?” The side-eye glance Shiro got was telling.

“You have no room to talk. You fear him more than you do God.”

Shiro swallowed. There was a glib remark on the tip of tongue, but his father shook his head and parked the truck.

“Just behave, Takashi.”

“I will, just…a little warning would have been nice,” he mumbled.

“I know but if I had, you would have stayed inside the house for another week,” he said. Shiro choked. “Don’t give me that look, I’m your father. I know these things. Now c’mon, let the man do his job.”

They slipped out of the truck and Shiro walked around the bed. He watched Keith’s face light up with a gentle smile when he greeted his father. They seemed closer than they had before Shiro left. Keith’s eyes were suddenly on him and he sobered up. He was given a nod, sans smile.

“Hey,” Keith said, waiting long enough for Shiro to parrot it back before turning away to get his tools.

It seemed Keith is a better person than him nowadays.

Shiro stayed by his father’s side with his arms crossed over his chest, only half listening to their conversation as Keith jacked the truck up and set to work. Shiro idly admired how good Keith looked in fit jeans and a tank top. His arms filled out nicely. He looked down though when he heard Keith grunt.

“Everything okay?” his father asked.

“Yeah, just. The oil filter’s stuck,” Keith said, voice muffled by the truck.

Shiro stepped a little closer and leaned his elbow on the hood of the truck. “Did you try twisting it?”

“Yeah, nothing.”

“Maybe pull harder?” Shiro suggested. He hadn’t meant for it to come out condescending, but the tone of his voice was borderline teasing from having chickened out of calling him a pet name he had no right of saying. He didn’t think Keith would take kindly to being called “Princess” right now in their relationship, and Shiro didn’t want to test his luck when Keith had a wrench in his grip.

Keith rolled out and glared up at him. There was an oil smudge on his cheek.

“Do you wanna try or something, Hotshot?” There was a hint of irritation there that wasn’t from being unsuccessful in prying the filter free.

“And have you drop the truck on me? No thanks,” Shiro said. Keith’s face hardened at the accusation, and Shiro realized his mistake with a sickening dread solidifying in his stomach.

“Takashi,” his father scolded. Shiro tried not to bristle at the concentrated disappointment that would no doubt linger for the rest of the day, and he sobered up.

“Sorry, sorry. If you don’t mind, I’ll see if I can loosen it for you,” Shiro amended. Maybe he should ask Keith to give him a new filter while he was at it too. Keith stared at him for a few more seconds before he rolled out completely and got up.

“Be my guest,” he said with a wave. Shiro graciously bit his tongue and lied back on the creeper. He rolled under the truck, and the light disappeared from his vision.

The first indicator something was amiss was the shake in his hand when he reached for the filter. Panic was ruthless and acted fast. It was a tremor that started in his chest and stampeded through his veins in mere seconds, trampling the life out of his limbs. Shiro felt the air being squeezed out of his lungs and jagged rocks digging into his skin. Dust and dirt coated his tongue and choked him, turning to mud in his windpipe. His hand was numb. He couldn’t move.

_I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe._

_I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe._

_I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe._

A sharp tug on Shiro’s ankle pulled him out and into open space. Cool air penetrated his heaving lungs as light flooded his vision accompanied by Keith’s questioning expression, mere inches from his face. Shiro’s heartbeat was thick in his ears and muted out whatever it was that Keith said.

“W-what?” he asked.

“You were hyperventilating,” Keith said. Shiro furrowed his brow at the words but his racing heartbeat was hard to ignore. He felt like he was going to pass out.

“Oh.” Shiro had no energy to say anything else. Keith seemed to get the idea and didn’t look irritated when his “You okay?” went unanswered. Shiro saw his father’s concerned face hovering behind Keith. Shiro moved to sit up but felt something in his hand. He looked down and saw the dirty filter warping under his unforgiving grip.

 

 

Shiro sat outside for the rest of the visit with his back against the side of the house as he basked in the sun. He felt like his marrow was replaced with lead. Energy was hard to come by as of late, and he felt robbed of a month’s worth. The voice of reason in his head told him he should write down what happened, record it and keep it on his agenda to bring up at his next therapy session, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. The episode played back like a faulty record every time he closed his eyes, skipping and rewinding until it became distorted and corroded. It was unsettling but bearable, like a bad dream fading away and making less sense the longer time progressed.

He peeked an eye open when footsteps neared him. They stopped a foot short of him, and the person offered him a cold water bottle. He glanced up and took the offered beverage.

“Thanks,” Shiro murmured. He uncapped the bottle and guzzled half of it down in one go. The wash of cold down his throat was a welcome refreshment. He sighed and screws the cap back on.

“Wanna tell me what happened back there?” Keith asked. He leaned his shoulder against the side of the house.

Shiro shrugged and rubbed his neck. “Flashback,” was a vague answer, and he was tempted to leave it at that, but he felt Keith had put up with enough of his bullshit for a lifetime. “I guess small spaces are a no-go for me from now on too.”

Keith raised his chin in thought, the gears in his head turning, Shiro knew for a fact. Keith had always been able to piece the smallest bits of information together and know the skeleton outline of any situation presented to him. Sometimes it was terrifying how precise he could get. Shiro could only imagine how much Keith had deduced from one sentence he provided.

“Thanks for getting the filter out, anyway.”

Shiro chuffed a humorless laugh and looked down at the weeds sprouting up along the edge of the pavement. He plucked the leaves from the thick stem before yanking the weed from the ground, roots and all. Somehow, it left him feeling even more hollow.

“You’ve been taking care of them,” Shiro said. He didn’t elaborate on the who. He didn’t need to.

“Someone had to,” Keith said.

“Thank you.”

“I didn’t do it for you, Shiro.”

“I know, but still. Thank you.” Shiro meant it too. He only hoped it translates well. Keith didn’t move or speak for a good moment, but he shifted and his voice sounded a tad softer.

“You’re welcome.” He pushed away from the house and took a step back. “Your dad’s waiting for you inside.” Keith disappeared back into the garage without waiting for Shiro’s response, but that was fine with him. He at least spent five minutes being civil with Keith, even if it cost him his dignity. It was a start, though.

After all, if he dug deep enough in the abysmal cavity of his identity, Shiro knew the desire to give Keith the world still breathed clean air.


	3. Chapter 3

Keith’s smile has been trapped in Shiro’s head for days. No longer is he the boy who hung off Shiro’s arm as he escorted him to prom and later promised the stars to. Keith has grown and filled out in muscle that Shiro never once thought existed on the boy. He’s still lithe in comparison to Shiro, but his arms now carry a bulk that tightens the soft cotton that binds them, and Shiro doesn’t even want to think what time has done to his abdomen.

Is it wrong for him to look? It’s wrong for him to look.

The conversation he caught wind of after stepping back into the garage last week plays in his head like a movie with his thumb on the rewind button. Shiro has the unfortunate luxury of his mind supplying him with the image of Keith in high definition, from the flyaways of his messy hair down to the dirt packed under his fingernails. Keith’s fingers had curled around his father’s hand grasping crisp green bills and pushed it away.

_“I can’t accept this and you know that.”_

_“Then come over for dinner next Saturday. We’re making your favorite.”_

_“Tuna noodle?”_

_“With extra tuna.”_

_“Can’t say no to that.”_

Keith’s smile had been breathtaking, snatching the air from Shiro’s lungs with no remorse and stealing away into the night. It was a serene gentleness that Shiro hadn’t realized he missed, hadn’t realized how much the small quirk of that wicked mouth gave him notion to believe the world wasn’t just a heaping pile of shit just waiting to taint him. Breathing becomes extra difficult the more Shiro thinks about how ethereal Keith looked with the noon sun embracing his silhouette, so he diverts his attention to the words shared between father and ex-half of his soul.

Tuna noodle being Keith’s favorite dish is jarring, but Keith having made dinner with Shiro’s parents a tradition for four solid years is even more so. Shiro had pried the information out of his father once they were back within the safe confines of the truck and heading to the store. The information is still swirling in his head a week later. Keith had told him he took care of his parents, but the whole dinner factoid is a fist to the gut that has him upheaving chunks of his carefully crafted foundation. It solidifies just how much of a shit son Shiro is and an even more shit boyfriend Shiro had been.

Addressing that though is an entirely new ride of self-hatred and misery that he doesn’t want to dive into until he next can talk to his therapist, with whom he had just gotten off the phone with four hours prior so now he has to wait another two weeks for the next session. Bummer. For now, he has the vast expanse of stars above his head while he sits on the hood of his car with a cheap bottle of whiskey that’s about a third empty.

Heaving a sigh that he dreams could impale his lungs on his ribs, he takes a long swig of the spirit that corrodes his insides one swallow at a time. This session was a bad one—having to relive the horrific episode of being buried under the shrapnel that nearly rendered his arm and life useless as well as trying to keep his insides, well, _inside_ —that it ended hours ago yet it still shakes him.

He missed dinner. Keith was supposed to come over.

It’s a mere coincidence, he tells himself, that his inevitable post-session meltdown prolonged far into dinner; a coincidence that he bought the biggest bottle of whiskey he could find prior because he had an inkling he’d be staying out late.

Just a coincidence.

And with every self-proclaimed coincidence, he gulps down a mouthful of whiskey to help it all go down easier.

_“Have you told your parents yet?”_

_“About the flashbacks?” Shiro asked. “No, they don’t need to know things went to shit upstairs.”_

_“And what will you do if another one occurs? Like the one in the garage?”_

_Shiro shrugs, and he’s grateful his therapist can’t see him for once._

_“I’ve made it this far.”_

It definitely wasn’t the most progressive session. Not only is Shiro evading the questions his parents silently ask about what happened, but he also made the poor choice of excluding Keith from the events he retold; in fact, his therapist has no idea he’s even run into Keith. He meant what he said about trying to keep Keith in his past, but it’s so hard to uphold that principle when Keith pulls the dusty tarp off the mirror and forces himself to be seen. And with that, memories are surefire to resurface.

Shiro’s eyes trace the invisible lines of Corona Borealis and find comfort in the shimmers of light in the sky that are far more stable than he will ever be. He’s burnt out, a dying star—not even. The death of stars are beautiful, explosive, and memorable instances as they go supernovae and light up the sky for days, birthing new life with it. And even those that fade out quietly are beautiful and serene. Shiro is neither of the two.

He’s a falling star—a poser, not even a star but a comet. He’s falling from the sky and decomposing before he even breaks the exosphere. No one even sees him because the sun outshines him.

Shiro’s sun is Keith.

His thoughts turn sour when Keith commandeers his thoughts, once again taking center stage. Shiro can’t even be entirely mad either; Keith always looked good in the spotlight.

They had been sitting on Shiro’s couch mindlessly watching TV when Shiro popped Keith the question to go to his senior prom with him. Rose had stained Keith’s cheeks and eye contact became a difficult endeavor, but he had nodded with cheeks burning something fierce and a shy smile that was nigh impossible to keep internalized. And even when Shiro leaned in bury it with it kiss, it only widened.

They came out here to the desert after the dance, here being a near wasteland with an abandoned shack that once served as a maintenance outpost. Shiro had a truck back then, stick shift and all. They had camped out on the truck bed and stared up at the inky void with only the warmth of blankets and their bodies to embrace them. It was the last night he felt that everything would be okay.

Shiro plucks the memory from the forefront of his mind with the disdain one would carry a soiled pair of underwear with. It was unwelcome and he suspects the alcohol might have a hand in its sudden emergence. If he could throw memories away into the trash where they belong, he would do so without compunction.

But again, that might be the alcohol talking.

Time becomes a loose concept that Shiro no longer has the means to grasp. He has no idea how long he’s been out here for when he hears an engine approaching his location. It gets closer, the sound loud but not massive like a truck or conventional vehicle. His guess would be a bike. His fingers itch around his half empty bottle.

The engine cuts off a few good feet behind Shiro, confirming that the visitor is here for him, and he hears the soft thud of feet touch the ground on dismount. Still, Shiro doesn’t turn. He keeps his gaze up at the condescending sky that refuses to give him answers to the questions he can’t bring himself to ask.

Footsteps approach him, and Shiro has déjà vu from when he was pulled over. It’s a sickening affirmation of who his random visitor is, and if he’s completely honest he doesn’t think he has the mental capacity and strength to have this conversation yet. That statement is only reinforced by the alcohol pumping through his veins and numbing the edges of his mind, but maybe Keith will appreciate the blunt honesty that comes with the inebriation. Less chance for lying, less chance for getting away with the attempt to lie.

“This your idea of a therapy session? Royal Emblem and dusty lungs?”

Shiro refuses to physically react to the words that suffocate his skin. He won’t show that weakness, he won’t.

_Keith doesn’t know. He doesn't. He doesn't know anything._

_He can’t know._

Shiro shrugs. “Doctor’s orders.” He knows for a fact his therapist would frown at his sudden immense interest in trying to convert his liver into mud.

Keith scoffs. “Right.” He steps around the bend of the hood, still hovering in Shiro’s periphery but closer now, and leans against the car. He stares up at the sky too. Shiro wonders if they’re looking at the same constellation, wonders if the same memories are playing through Keith’s head. He doesn’t ask.

“You missed dinner,” Keith says.

“Yeah.” Shiro breathes out slowly through his nose. He holds the whiskey out as a peace offering to Keith who only waves it away. “Your favorite, right? Never took you as a casserole guy.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if you actually cared to learn about me, you’d know.” Keith is a sponge soaked with acrimony and he’s drenching Shiro in it from head to toe.

He _really_ shouldn’t be having this conversation right now.

“I’m sensing some hurt feelings there,” Shiro says and isn’t proud of the sarcasm that drips from his words like morning dew.

“You tell me.”

Keith crosses his arms over his chest—closed off, rote, uncooperative unless it’s an even playing field. It’s like a cold shoulder that’s self-inflicted, amendable with just a few choice words that would butcher any one man’s pride in a series of tortuous seconds. Shiro has enough pride to fuel a second Roman Empire, and everyone is grotesquely aware how the first one went.

“So,” Shiro starts, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Keith look at him. “When did being a cop happen? Last I checked you had a problem with authority.”

Keith rolls his shoulders with far more grace than Shiro can ever dream to have. “You have pretty big shoes to fill.”

The answer is unsatisfying as it is venomous in its nonchalance. A silent killer, bringing awareness to the spreading fatality only after it’s too late. Shiro expects the majority of their conversation to follow this unforgiving path until they diverge into the conversation Keith is insisting on putting to rest.

Shiro sighs. “Why did you come out here, Keith?”

_How did you know I was here?_

“You skipped dinner. Can you blame me for being offended?”

“You flatter me, though I doubt my absence bothered you that much,” Shiro says.

“No, it pissed me the fuck off.” Anger diffuses into Keith’s voice like a tide breaking on shore. “You finally decide to remember you have parents who love you and you can’t even be bothered to appreciate them. You can’t even tell them you’re not going to be around for the dinner your mother spent hours preparing.”

The jagged shards of Keith’s words embed themselves in Shiro’s skin and pull, tearing him seam by seam, but he can only stare on in surprise and succumb to Keith’s mercy. All accusations are ones that Shiro has reprimanded himself with in religious routine for the past five years. Nothing about Keith’s insults are new to Shiro, just the mouth spitting them in his face. He’s half expecting Keith to jab a pointed finger into his chest to enunciate every tenant and spear his heart in the process.

“You take advantage of the people who care for you and leave them behind to rot. People like you _disgust_ me,” Keith half yells. His voice is rough as it channels every bottled pain, every thought born of contempt, that he has kept six feet under for the entirety of Shiro’s departure. But it’s contagious and Shiro’s blood sparks with a heat that boils and warps his skin.

_You, you, you._

_All your fault._

“I left to protect them,” Shiro says. His jaw is tight and his glare cruel as it cuts into Keith. “This is bigger than the two of us.”

“Bullshit. You ran away with your tail between your legs like the coward you are,” Keith says with an insufferable scoff that does nothing to ease Shiro’s shattering nerves.

“You would have done the same thing if you were me,” Shiro bites back. He thinks he imagines it, but Keith falters for the briefest of seconds. Something flashes in his eyes that Shiro is too inebriated to catch and decipher, but he thinks he hit a nerve. It’s fleeting though, and Keith is rearing back at him with a viciousness equivalent to a starving lion.

“I have more balls than you, and at least I have the backbone to not wallow in my own self-pity. You, who’s never there when it counts.”

Rage is a consuming monstrosity that ravages and leaves countries destroyed in its wake, and it makes Shiro want to bare his teeth and growl like a diseased wolf pouncing on its prey. His eyes and voice go dark and dangerous, every word a threat—no, a _command_ —to back down.

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

That was the wrong thing to say. Keith slams his fist down on the hood of the car, uncaring if it dents, and the sound shoots into the dead air. His eyes are wild and his lips are curled into a malicious snarl that mars the softness of his face.

“Ryou is fucking _dead_ , Shiro! He’s dead, he’s _been_ dead for seven years. Move the fuck on, you owe him nothing but that.” Keith was practically in his face yelling the cold, brutal truth, but his words cause Shiro to jolt back as if wounded. His throat feels too thick and obstructive. The fire in his blood moves to his eyes and makes itself cozy there.

What Keith said is sobering, and even Keith seems to fathom the noxious taint that fell from his lips. He doesn’t apologize though. Instead, he only adds more salt to the gaping wound in Shiro’s chest.

“Life is shit, Shiro. It’s always going to be shit but you move on. You choose to make it better,” Keith says. Most of the anger is gone from his voice, but it lingers in Shiro’s head, becomes a parasite that burrows into his head like an intrusive worm. He looks away from Keith, unable to comment. Keith sighs and shoves his hands into his pockets before returning his attention back to the night sky.

“You’re going to get over yourself,” Keith says after an extended beat of silence. His words aren’t a suggestion, they’re an order. “We’re not teenagers anymore, so stop acting like one.”

Shiro side-eyes him. “I’ll stop if you will.”

“Not how it works. I’m sick of cleaning up your messes. Get it together or get out of my town.” He pushes away from the car and turns on his heel, terminating any other opportunity for the conversation to progress. Not that Shiro wants it to, either. Regardless, the dismissal is disquieting. When Keith is halfway to his bike, Shiro calls out.

“What, not gonna make sure I don’t drive back drunk?” Shiro would never be so reckless and stupid, but he’ll be stuck out here for a good few hours until he’s even close to being legal to drive. Keith doesn’t even pause in step.

“Not in uniform, not my problem.” Shiro hears the engine start a few seconds later, and then Keith is peeling off, away from the main source of his own current duress.

Shiro stares at the dark plains of the desert expanding before him, fading away into the dark like his own beaten soul. He casts a cursory glance at his half bottle of Royal Emblem before he upends it. Dark amber spills from the mouth of the bottle and falls into the dirt at his feet, turning it to mud. He no sooner lets the bottle slip from his fingers. It falls to the ground and nets a large crack that travels from the base to the start of the neck. He almost wishes the force was enough to shatter it. Maybe then he could follow example. He casts his gaze back up at Corona Borealis—dazed, romanticizing, aching.

His arm is numb.

 

 

Shiro makes it back home by midnight with the accepted fact that he will have a terrible hangover come morning and will be socially unacceptable for the entire day. But he forces through his self-inflicted torture with Advil and a hefty glass of water. He doesn’t wake up until noon.

It’s now four in the afternoon and Shiro not only has the sun beating down on his back, but encouraging his muted headache to come back full force as well. A couple of cold tupperware containers are gripped in his hands as he stands in front of a beige door. He’s only been standing here for mere seconds but it feels like twenty minutes. He has no idea what overcame him when he saw his mother pull containers of last night’s dinner out of the fridge with the intention of running them over to Keith, but Shiro said he would do it.

Shiro keeps proving to be out of his fucking mind.

But here he is with sweating hands despite the cold seeping into his palms. Last night’s fight is still assaulting his mind and telling him to get the fuck out. To leave the food on his doorstep and hightail it out of town. Prove Keith right that all Shiro is good for is abandonment. It makes his stomach churn at the thought, but something keeps his feet cemented to the doorstep.

He wants to prove Keith wrong.

It’s only leftovers. Less than five minutes of his time. He can do this. He _will_ do this.

Shiro rubs his jaw and takes a deep breath before knocking firmly on the door. He hears movement inside the house, and a few moments later the door opens to reveal Keith in a humble set of sweats and a loose t-shirt. Shock washes over his face like an upturned bucket of water.

“Shiro?” he asks. “What are you doing here?”

Shiro holds the containers out to Keith. “You forgot these last night. Mom’s worried you don’t eat enough as is, so. Here.”

Keith stares at him, completely speechless. His eyes search Shiro’s face and then flicker down to the food. Slowly, he reaches out and takes them from Shiro with articulate caution. Shiro notes (uselessly) that Keith makes sure that their hands don’t touch. He shoves his hands in his pockets once they’re empty.

“Thanks,” Keith says. He looks stiff and uncomfortable. At least it’s not just Shiro.

“Yeah. And you’re invited next Saturday too, but you already know that,” Shiro says. He rocks back and forth on his heels and relaxes his hunched shoulders. He meets Keith’s stare head on. “See you then?”

Keith opens his mouth then closes it only to clear his throat. “Yeah.”

“Cool,” Shiro says and steps back. “See you later then.”

He doesn’t wait to hear if Keith has anything left to say and turns on his heel, heading back to his car. When he buckles himself in and looks back at Keith’s house, the door is shut and the man is nowhere to be seen. Shiro starts his car and heads back home, Keith’s words from last night chanting in his head.

_“Get it together or get out of my town.”_

For the first time in six years, he doesn’t want to leave.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a double update in apology for missing last week. Things got a little hectic on my end. Triple thanks to Val for proof-reading my sleep-induced prose. <3
> 
> Also if it weren't for [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj4iQItsJSY), I wouldn't have gotten this out as quickly as I had. I think it sets the mood fairly well too. Hope you enjoy!

“I’m sorry, son,” is what Shiro can read from the face staring at him from the other side of the door. What he actually says later isn’t that much different.

The typical blue sky streaked with golden rays is now overcast with depressing grey. Rain is a rare commodity, especially during the cooler months, but it falls down upon them like a never-ending pitcher. The water soaks into the dirt and turns the ground into a muddy swamp, the downpour too much for the soil to soak up at once.

The rain drips onto the crisp uniform of the man before him. For an idle moment, Shiro fears it will be ruined. The badges clipped to the front of his deep navy dress coat look important, even if a bit dull from the lack of light. He carefully notes the stars lining the shoulders of the coat as well as the pins on the lapels. The concern is on the tip of Shiro’s tongue but is lost when he looks back at the man’s face. Dark eyes swimming with unforetold demons stare down at Shiro.

Whatever haunts the man’s mind is more important to him than his dry-cleaning. Shiro lets him inside.

Later, Shiro will equate closing the door behind them to him closing the door on his own happiness.

“Do you like tea, sir?” He hadn’t asked the man to remove his boots, something he will most likely be berated for later, but the haunted eyes that cut into him gave him enough notion to let it slide. He glances over his shoulder as he sets the kettle over the flame. His uniform eerily reminds him of his brother’s, but the colours are all wrong and there is no hat to be seen.

“Are your parents home?” the man asks instead. Closing a cupboard, Shiro sets the porcelain mugs down on the counter.

“Yeah,” he says, strangely breathless. “I’ll go get them.”

The man’s name is Kolivan, Shiro learns when his parents are seated at the table. Steam rolls off from the mugs of tea sitting in front of them, all left untouched except for Shiro’s. It burns his tongue and throat, but he winces it down because it burns his rampant nerves too.

Kolivan’s uniform is of importance in the end, as Shiro deduced; he’s a commanding general in the Marine Corps. He specifically oversees Ryou’s squadron. That particular exposition dump is enough to make Shiro’s stomach recoil and wither with the impending dread that the next few words that Kolivan utters will consume him with the rage of a wildfire.

“I am terribly sorry,” Kolivan begins, and Shiro locks down from that alone. The look in the man’s eyes is all Shiro needs to know, yet he keeps listening for reasons unknown to him.

Ryou isn’t coming home.

The worst part is that he didn’t even die in the sky, he died on the ground. He and his unit had been investigating new territory. Their vehicle snagged a landmine, and the rest is history. Ryou had been the only fatal casualty, the others making it out in mostly one piece. A freak accident, it happens more often than it should.

Shiro hears his mother break down next to him, and he sees his father shift toward her out of the corner of his eye, but Shiro remains static, numb to the core. More words are exchanged: details, condolences, funeral costs and assurance that it will be covered. They go in one ear and out the other, but eventually Kolivan leaves.

Shiro is thankful he hadn’t asked the man to remove his shoes; it allows him to leave faster.

 

 

The simple downpour turned into a raging storm with lightning crackling against the sky and thunder shaking the heavens. Grey turns dark and unforgiving, no sign of light to be found. It’s still coming down strong, long after Kolivan left. Shiro had remained rooted to his chair for the most part of an hour with his parents weeping beside him.

His mind is on lockdown with thorns spreading and piercing through his lungs. Breathing becomes an excruciating task to comply with no matter how rudimentary. The thorns grow on thick, coarse vines that fill the space in his organs and spindles his insides. They flourish with the chant that assaults his head and cracks the interior of his skull.

_Gone. Gone. Gone._

_He’s gone. Not coming back._

_Please. Please come home._

_G o n e._

The shrill screech of the wooden chair scraping across the floor is jarring, and Shiro’s parents look at him in concern. He doesn’t look at them or offer any words. Instead. he walks over to the front door.

“Takashi?” he hears his mother call out as he slips his shoes on. Her voice shakes on the syllables, and that alone makes the thorns slice his bleeding heart. He tugs on a loose jacket and is halfway in the mud before the storm door slams shut behind him.

The shriek of his name dies under the reign of the thunderous sky, lost to him as he bolts across the swampy plains. His shoes sink into the mud and pull with each step, a sickening lurch threatening to rip them from his feet. Water soaks his socks and seeps unforgiving cold into the bones of his feet. It creeps up his legs and digs its bloodthirsty nails into his skin.

Shiro runs and runs, no room in his haphazard thoughts for the well-being of his clothes. They turn into a second skin as they mold and stick to his body, rapidly becoming an anchor that impedes the speed of his sprint. Pain untouched by the numbness burns through his muscles, but nothing compares to the despairing agony in his chest.

Shiro doesn’t stop running until he’s covered in earth and reaches a familiar house. His feet brought him here on autopilot; he doesn’t know what he would have done if he hadn’t come here, and he doesn’t meditate on the possibilities either. Climbing the steps nearly lands him on his face, but he pushes through and almost rams into the door. His fist is heavy on the beige door and loud enough to mask as a crash of thunder. He knocks again for good measure. He’s seconds away from collapsing when the door opens, revealing a disheveled mop of black hair and a curious florid gaze that enraptures his soul.

“Shiro?” Keith asks. Concern saturates his voice more than the water does Shiro’s clothes. Keith’s eyes rake over Shiro’s appearance before jumping back to Shiro’s face at the crackle of thunder. “Shiro, what’s wrong?”

Shiro’s mutinous tongue feels thick and too big for his mouth. Ironically, it’s the driest part of him.

“Gone,” Shiro manages to say. He doesn’t miss the falter in the intense stare or how tar eyebrows knit together.

“What?” Keith asks. He shifts his weight and then beckons Shiro closer. “Come inside, you’re soaked. You must be freezing.” Firm fingers curl into the front of Shiro’s hoodie and pull him inside. He shuts the door on the deafening roar of the storm.

A sharp ring reverberates in Shiro’s skull and mutes all other sound. It takes him a while to realize that Keith is talking to him, the silent movement of his lips the only indication that words are failing to reach his ears. He stares at the peach lips that pull into a frown. Shiro looks down at the floor. He laments the soiled rug beneath his muddied feet.

The grip on his hoodie becomes more insistent.

“Shiro?” Sound comes in uneasy waves and re-gifts itself back to him. He lifts his gaze only to be pinned by a concerned stare. Those beautiful, kind eyes reflect Shiro’s face, and it becomes a trial to not recoil from what Keith must be seeing. Shiro thinks he sees a hint of fear flash across mauve eyes.

He’s scaring him.

Hands cup Shiro’s face, and he nearly flinches at the warmth boiling his frozen cheeks. Smooth thumbs kiss his reddened skin. Keith is close enough for Shiro to see the detail of his eyelashes. Shiro idly wonders if Keith can feel his rapid pulse thrumming beneath his skin.

“What’s wrong?” Keith’s voice is a melody that, for a moment, gives Shiro the narrow allowance to pretend that everything is okay. Shiro thinks he feels his lip shake, the tremors migrating down and dispersing across the span of his shoulders to rack his core; he blames it on the cold.

“He’s gone,” Shiro whispers.

“Who?” Keith asks. A scream begs Shiro to shred his vocal chords to match his brother’s icy corpse, but he stifles its obstinate urgency. His voice cracks in petulance as if punishment for keeping what little control he has left.

“Ryou.” The name sinks into the cracked wallpaper and the ruined carpet, digs into the potted plant beside the window and buries itself into the threadbare cushions of the aged sofa. It fills the void of the house and leaves Shiro stripped bare for a violent reaping. The gravity of the name takes a while to register in Keith’s mind, but soon enough Shiro sees horror strike his face and rob him of colour. Shiro can’t tell if the tremble he feels on his face is coming from Keith’s hands or from Shiro himself.

“No.” The single word knocks the air out of Shiro’s lungs and enrages the ache in his bones. His eyes burn.

“He’s not coming back.”

Keith shakes his head. “ _No_.” The muscles in his neck tighten as he swallows, and this time Shiro pinpoints the origin of the shaking to Keith’s hands. They quiver in his periphery as they slip from his face. The staggering step back Keith takes steals with it the remaining strength in Shiro’s legs.

Shiro’s knees wobble, and then he crumples to the floor.

“Oh my god,” Keith breathes. He’s back at Shiro’s side immediately, like a ship dragging an anchor through staggering mud. Shiro clutches at the body enveloping him, one hand digging into an arm and another into a sturdy back. The line of his nose pushes into the hollow of Keith’s neck, and he sucks in the clean scent of pallid skin. Keith must have taken a shower recently; he smells of midsummer wildflowers.

“He’s not coming back.” The whispered words ghost over Keith’s skin and pool in the dip of his clavicle. Shiro claws at Keith, desperation staining his movements and painting him an ugly animal. Keith only holds him tighter to his chest.

Shiro thinks, if Keith were to let go, Shiro would fall apart.

“He’s—”

“I’m so sorry,” Keith interjects, murmuring into Shiro’s wet hair. His wiry arms wrap around Shiro like a makeshift present ready to burst from the pressure of the ribbons. They pull him closer until he’s half in a warm lap, and the motion pulls a strangled sob from his throat. A grounding hand grips the back of his neck. Shiro wishes it would squeeze him until there’s nothing left of him. The wish is unheard as the grip remains steady, remains an attempt of comfort.

“He’s dead.” Life is just another moniker for cruelty, and it laughs at Shiro as he breathes vitality into the admission that will haunt him for years to come. His breath hitches in his chest, and a downpour of his very own consumes him. But Keith is there with a strong, bruising grip and hushed words that breach his skull.

Keith’s warmth hurts more than the cold.

 

 

Ryou doesn’t have a viewing, just a closed-casket funeral with a photo to remember him by. There isn’t much left of him; an arm, a chunk of his hip, and his spleen are the most intact if not completely attached. He was an organ donor—Shiro remembers him proudly checking “yes” for the title—and there’s some mordant sardonicism about the veracity that none of Ryou’s organs are salvageable.

Keeping the casket open would be even more upsetting, if anything. Still, Shiro feels shunted at having the chance to see his brother one last time ripped away from him. He wishes he could see him regardless of the haphazard and brutal fashion his body now incarnates. He’s strong, he can take the sight of it. He doesn’t romance the cowardice like the others, let him see, _let him see_ —

The casket remains closed.

The funeral is beautiful with the sun beaming down on them. Ryou’s casket is covered in more chrysanthemums than Shiro has ever seen in his life. They had always been his brother’s favorite.

 _The golden flower_ , his brother had said one late night with the cool breeze drifting through their bedroom window. _It symbolizes joy and long life._

“That worked out well for you, huh,” Shiro mutters under his breath. Keith looks at him in question but doesn’t say anything. Shiro acts like he never uttered a word.

Ryou’s troop and a few officers attend too, or those who could come. They give their final salute, and Shiro stares hard at Ryou’s smiling, proud face through the entirety of it. The photo used was the first time Ryou ever put on his service dress. His smile was infectious and stubborn, it refused to leave his young face. He was eighteen in the photo.

Now he’s twenty-two and maggot food.

Socializing and accepting condolences from others is probably the worst of it. Hundreds of _“I’m so sorry”_ and _“He was such a good friend”_ and _“He’s in a better place”_ —it was suffocating to hear recurrently. Lather, rinse, repeat. The only thing that keeps Shiro upright is Keith’s hand gripped fiercely in his own that he’s afraid he nearly breaks.

 

 

School is crippling to get through even though there’s only a handful of months left of the academic year. It becomes a sea of stares full of pity and strings of meaningless words that are just as hard to swallow as they are to be uttered. Shiro wants them all to shut up, but he’s far too polite to do anything more than give a strained nod and artificial smile.

On the bright side, he thinks, at least football season is over so he can’t throw a game courtesy of his miserable state.

It’s the one and only time Shiro is thankful that football and soccer share a season. Before it was always frustrating that their practices and games would overlap more often than not, making going to his boyfriend’s games a rueful challenge. He’s made it to plenty before, but there were times when that was near impossible. But had they been different seasons, Keith is constantly at his side and even if he had obligations, Shiro is fairly certain that Keith would throw them in favor of being stitched to his side.

Every routine and even arbitrary task now carries with it an intense difficulty to complete. Something as simple as brushing his teeth or putting on a fresh pair of socks is an endeavor on most days, but Shiro would rather be buried alive than to ever ask Keith to help him get dressed so he staggers through the motions. Keith still doesn’t know the extent of the emotional massacre left in Shiro’s headspace, but he knows enough on how to act and treat Shiro. That’s satisfactory for the both of them.

Keith never once says that it’s okay because he knows it’s not; and perhaps if Shiro wasn’t suffering so much, he would maybe fall even more in love with the boy.

Keith is pressed against Shiro’s side one night. They’re crammed onto the soft couch downstairs as Shiro’s aversion to his bedroom still prevails. It’s nearing midnight. Keith presses a languid, dry kiss to the line of Shiro’s jaw, sighing when Shiro rubs a warm hand over his back. When the boy settles against him, face tucked into the crook of a soft neck, Shiro breaks the ritual silence they practice every night. His voice is so low it rumbles in his chest.

“I don’t know if I should go to school,” Shiro says. After a beat of silence, he adds, “After graduation.” Lazy sleep abandons Keith, but it sedates his voice on its way out.

“What?”

Shiro sighs. “Maybe school just isn’t for me.” He’s met with a silence that rattles his hollow bones. Even Keith’s breathing is hushed. Maybe if Keith chooses to ignore that he said anything, it’ll be easier to forget. Even if it stings. After a moment though, that hope kills itself as Keith pushes himself up onto his elbows to better look at Shiro’s face. Shadows warp the porcelain face hovering above him, but even in the dark, Shiro is charmed by the shape of his beauty.

“What are you talking about?” Keith asks. “You’ve wanted this for years. CSU is your dream.”

 _Our dream_ , hangs in the air like an baitless fishhook.

Meeting Keith’s gaze is difficult, so he looks at the faded striped pattern of the sofa instead.

“I just…I don’t think I can do it.”

Ryou’s death left a huge rift in Shiro’s life that he can’t jump over. Each time he tries to build a bridge, it only crumbles and falls into the endless canyon. It’s insufferable for him to assimilate back into society and live up the expectation that he is a formidable addition to the community. Even with his friends, he’s stunted. The most he talks to is Matt and Allura, but only because Matt’s on his team and Allura’s insistent. He’s been stuck with them for years and there’s no getting rid of them, but that doesn’t mean he’s below prolonged avoidance. He’s even more scarce to everyone else.

“Shiro.” Incredibly soft fingers cup his cheek, and it takes him far too long to turn toward the touch. When he opens his eyes, it’s after a good minute and with concentrated resignation. He is met with nothing but pure, unadulterated love and admiration.

“Of course you can do it,” Keith says. “You’re the smartest guy I know.”

Shiro arches an eyebrow despite himself. “Even smarter than Matt?” Keith takes a moment to consider, long enough for Shiro to stutter.

“Okay, second smartest.” Keith’s grin is bright even in the dark, a beacon for Shiro who is lost and drowning at sea.

“Thanks.” Shiro punctuates with a grunt, but there’s humour in his eyes that Keith no doubt sees. Keith flashes him a softer smile but no sooner does he replace it with an opaque seriousness.

“What has you thinking about this?” he asks. A sigh heaves from Shiro’s chest, and he’s tempted to leave that as his answer, but he can only escape and get so far with Keith lying half on top of him. He drags a heavy hand down his face.

“I’ve been thinking about joining the military,” Shiro says, setting the bomb out in the open. He detonates it by adding, “Air Force, to be exact.”

He experiences more than witnesses the cold rigidness that possesses Keith. His muscles interlock and tense beneath his touch, and with it delivers a rippling wave of shame. Shiro would think the worse if he couldn’t feel his hand rise and fall with each breath Keith took. Shiro can taste the salt in the air from his own sweat.

“Shiro, no.” The small, quiet voice hurts. The pained expression is overpowering. Keith’s face hurts, everything hurts.

“Keith, I—”

“No. No, this isn’t what he would have wanted. He would want you to go to school.”

 _You don’t know what he would have wanted_ , screams at the forefront of Shiro’s mind, but he snuffs it out with dry fingers. The aftermath sticks to his skin like blisters. At Shiro’s deafening silence, Keith keeps going.

“You got accepted into your first choice school, and in a few months you’ll be heading out for football boot camp. That’s what you’ve always wanted.”

“What if I don’t want that anymore?” Shiro asks. His eyes find great interest in the shadows draping the far wall, undisturbed from the moonlight filtering in through the window. He sighs for the nth time. “I feel like I owe him this.”

“You owe him to try and live a safe, normal life.” Gentle fingers press against Shiro’s jaw and force him to meet Keith’s intensive stare when Shiro doesn’t have the gall to do it on his own accord. “Shiro, please. Don’t enlist.”

Shiro swallows, nearly wincing at both the sound and how his throat closes up. He lets the quiet speak for itself as he considers his options. Guilt is a terrible, terrible thing that infects his bloodstream while he watches Keith’s face gradually crumble with every ticking second. The moment he sees retreat reflect in dark eyes and the radiating warmth begins to pull away, Shiro reaches up and cards his fingers through hair the colour of the night sky. The flinch that jolts the boy’s body spikes Shiro’s shame.

“Okay,” Shiro says. “I’ll try.”

Relief embraces Keith with disconcerting speed and he returns to Shiro’s side, relaxing into the touch. Hot breath ghosts across the span of his neck before gentle lips brush against his heated skin. He shifts and replaces his lips with a finger, dragging invisible lines down the thick column of his neck. Shiro imagines he’s connecting the beauty marks that litter his neck into constellations. Out of the corner of his eye, Shiro watches Keith struggle with what to say, the turn of his mouth a telltale sign of the war inside him.

“Thank you,” he says after a while. Shiro mentally follows the descript drag of Keith’s finger, and he thinks Keith is burning Hercules into his skin. Then, “He’d be proud of you.”

 _How?_ Shiro wants to ask. _He’s dead, he can’t be proud of anything anymore._

Shiro answers Keith with a kiss so he doesn’t have to speak.

 

 

Shiro graduates with a heavy heart and a downcast gaze. He made salutatorian but declined the rank. An anger has settled in his core, rearing its ugly head on occasion, and he doubts he can keep it dormant through an opening speech. That, and he simply doesn’t want to.

He never looks at the stands, even as he accepts his diploma. He never tosses his cap into the air. And he never once thinks about Ryou’s promise that he would be there to watch his baby brother graduate. Shiro never thinks of any of it so he can get through the day and never look back on it.

Possibly what stings the most is getting his yearbook. It’s the first year his brother doesn’t steal the wretched thing to write something horrendously cheesy and embarrassing in chicken scratch. Without failure, he always threw in “Baka Taka” somewhere, a joke of a nickname that Shiro grew to be fond of.

_“You can barely even speak Japanese,” Shiro says with a groan. His cheeks are stained rose. “Do you even remember how to say hello?”_

_“I don’t need to greet you to call you an idiot. Besides, it rhymes. You like rhymes.”_

_“I hate rhymes.”_

_“See, that’s why you’re single,” Ryou says, all smiles and laughter. He ruffles Shiro’s hair into a bird’s nest and dashes away before Shiro can retaliate._

A running family joke that their parents told Ryou could continue only if he tried to learn the language of his heritage. Shiro thought for sure his brother would have jumped ship, but he didn’t. He spent two hours every Friday and Saturday studying grammar and conjugation. All for a stupid nickname Shiro pretended to hate.

And now he’ll never hear it again.

Shiro leaves his yearbooks behind in his closet when he packs for college. As promised, Shiro spends all of his summer with Keith until he has to leave early for the football season. Keith helps him load his threadbare car up with his belongings.

“Promise you’ll call?” Keith asks when they load the last box into the car. Shiro had silently mourned the day he had to trade his beaten down truck in for a more sensible car. Keith had moped with him, even wrote a eulogy for the late Ford as it was sent to the scrapyard.

Keith shoves his hands into his jean pockets and leans his hip against the car. Shiro shuts the trunk and moves to stand next to Keith. He scuffs his shoe against the ground and erupts a thin cloud of dirt into the air.

“Me? Keep in touch with my boyfriend? I would never.” A grin wide enough to define the dimples flanking his cheeks breaks across his face at the exasperated glare Keith levels him with.

“If you ignore me, I’ll show up at your dorm and smother you in your sleep.”

“Pinky swear?” Shiro asks, holding up his pinky. Keith scoffs but it turns into a laugh halfway. Shiro’s grin widens further, and he tugs Keith closer by his belt loops. Keith moves easily with the pull, making no fight other that an exaggerated huff. He drapes his arms over Shiro’s broad shoulders as Shiro grips him by the hips. He knocks their sweat-damp foreheads together and bumps his nose against Keith’s.

“Sorry I won’t be here for your game season,” Shiro says. “If I can, I’ll sneak a weekend back home to see you play.”

Keith rolls his eyes and returns the nose bump. “Our seasons have always conflicted. It’s no big deal.”

“It’s your senior year. It’s kind of a big deal. I have to make at least one game.” Shiro says it like it’s part of some unspoken boyfriend code that everyone knows and abides by.

“What, you gonna be my cheerleader?” Keith asks.

“Okay, too far. I only backflipped into your life once.”

“ _Twice_ ,” Keith corrects. The makings of a sly grin lift the corners of his lips, and Shiro doesn’t want to ever leave. “The second time was to ask me out.”

“Details.”

Keith laughs and it sounds like home. “If I win, will you be my trophy for the night?” Keith asks with a tilt of his head. Shiro slips his thumbs underneath the black shirt obscuring Keith’s stomach and rubs circles over sharp hipbones.

“I’d like to be your trophy for little while longer than that,” Shiro says, his voice low.

Keith bites his lower lip to keep his smile contained. “You can sit on my shelf as long as you’d like.”

Shiro rolls his eyes with a huff and erases the distance between their mouths.

Being with Keith is easy, so easy that Shiro aches just at the thought of letting go. Only recently did Keith start to limit the amount of nights he spent over, by request of Shiro. He needed to learn how to sleep alone before he’s thrown into the dorms with an unsuspecting roommate. Still, nothing could remove Keith from his side for the past three days. Shiro thinks even taking a shower alone gave Keith separation anxiety, so the next time he made Keith hop in with him.

Shiro is tempted to drive back the first chance he gets just to see Keith. Keith’s sudden clinginess is endearing as well as it spotlights Shiro’s own reluctance to start the next phase of his life. If Shiro can make it through one year alive, it’s not going to be without complications.

Keith’s lips are rich velvet and there’s a burst of spiced orange on his tongue. Kissing him becomes a battle of restraint and not giving into greed, which he loses miserably when he can’t keep himself from pressing Keith back against the trunk of the car and inhabiting the space between his legs.

He only pulls back when his lungs weep for air and Keith’s lips are abused and a pretty pink. A string of saliva connects their mouths, and Shiro’s cheeks colour at their impulsive sloppiness. He severs it with a flick of his finger. He clears his throat.

“Maybe, uh, we should stop,” Shiro says.

Keith actually pouts. “I don’t think we should.”

Shiro stutters. “I’m not fucking you on my car.”

“How about in it?”

“ _Keith_.”

“Okay, okay. Fine, no fun.”

“I didn’t say _no_ fun,” Shiro drawls and knocks their hips together. A giddy smile bursts across Keith’s face and lights up his eyes like a thousand fireflies. “Just not in the car I’ll be stuck in for two hours.” That’s two hours of road time that doesn’t need to be spent thinking about how Keith feels and the noises he makes.

“Point taken,” Keith says. He sobers up some and takes in Shiro’s appearance. His eyes linger on his name stitched into the front of his letterman jacket.

“I’m going to miss you.” Shiro’s voice is soft when he utters the words. Mauve eyes dart up to Shiro’s face. They soften.

“I’ll miss you too.”

The weight of their words hold them in place and mute them. Shiro isn’t leaving until morning, but already it feels like a premature goodbye. Shiro breaks the silence first by shedding out of his jacket. He holds it out to Keith.

“Here.”

Dark eyebrows disappear behind the messy, black fringe before reappearing into a furrow. A pale hand reaches out in hesitant confusion and Keith meets Shiro’s level stare.

“What?”

Shiro gestures at the jacket. “Take it.”

“What, no. I have my own.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t have my name on it,” Shiro says. When Keith still hesitates, he jostles the jacket. “I’m not taking no for an answer.”

Keith huffs but doesn’t immediately go for the jacket. Finally though, the suspended hand reaches out. Only when fingers curl around the well-cared-for fabric does Shiro let go.

“You love this thing,” Keith says it like it’s a strong enough argument to change Shiro’s mind. Shiro shrugs.

“Keep it warm for me until I come back then,” he says. He smiles at the boy. “Come on, let’s head back inside.”

Keith pushes away from the car and falls into step next to Shiro. Their shoulders bump playfully.

The following morning when the sun is just barely gifting the sky with light, Shiro’s parents and Keith see him off. Shiro’s jacket looks big but good on Keith, he decides.

 

 

College is as difficult as it is a distraction, and it only proves to worsen three months in.

The team is nice and respective of Shiro. They love having him on the field with them and believe him to be a great asset to this year’s season. Shiro is constantly invited to outings and parties, every Friday is movie night, and every weekend becomes a challenge of coming up with a new excuse as to why Shiro can’t drink alcohol. Making friends is easy when you’re a new addition to a team who already knows everybody. Shiro doesn’t even have to lift a finger.

The hard part is acting lively and pretending that his chest isn’t ripped open and empty with the wind whipping through him; is smiling when he feels like the ground is caving beneath his feet; is getting up every morning when all he wants is to lie down for the next eight years.

And Keith isn’t here for any of it.

Shiro gets a phone call mid-September one night as he’s leaving the dining hall. His nerves have been frazzled and on edge all day, but one look at the name on his lock screen has him at ease within seconds. He can’t answer fast enough.

He hates who he’s become.

“Keith, hey,” Shiro says. “What’s up?”

“Hey.” Keith sounds incredibly small. “Did I call at a bad time?”

Shiro glances at the raucous dining hall behind him. “Not at all, just finished dinner. Everything okay?” He turns right and exits the building. He’s greeted by the warm air that carries the scent of freshly cut grass. Keith is quiet for a good moment, long enough for Shiro to worry that the call was disconnected. But when he hears the sharp intake of breath on the other end, that alone gives him enough reason to worry. When Keith speaks, Shiro stops in the middle of the sidewalk.

“I’m sorry, Shiro,” Keith says, his voice decorated in fissures. The sound of it breaks Shiro’s heart.

“What’s wrong?” Shiro asks. He can hear the wetness of Keith’s throat when he swallows.

“I got a letter from the college today,” Keith says. Shiro wracks his brain to apply the context. Right, Keith sent in his application months ago. He should be due for a response soon. Keith exhales slowly and Shiro pretends not to notice the shake that plagues it.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” A pause. It stretches on, and Shiro starts to analyze it. He can’t help but wonder if Keith wants him to fill in the gaps himself. When he doesn’t, Keith’s resigned voice fills the void. “I didn’t get in.”

“Oh, Keith.” Shiro can’t keep the pain from his voice. “I’m so sorry.” Shiro spots one of the monumental boulders in the grass and pointedly ignores the _“Do not sit on boulder”_ plaque.

“Me too.”

Shiro bites his cheek. “How are you feeling?”

“What do you think?” The dry question is followed by a self-deprecating laugh that makes Shiro’s stomach churn. “Fucking shitty.”

“I’m so sorry,” Shiro repeats and winces. He knows that isn’t what Keith wants to hear. “This isn’t…this doesn’t change anything.”

“Actually, this kind of changes our entire plan of attending the same school,” Keith states matter-of-factly. His words are dripping with cynicism that is never a good sign for anything.

“You wouldn’t like it here anyway. Too many people and the tacos are shitty.”

“I don’t even like tacos.”

“A trait I will never fully understand, but I digress. Really though, you’re not missing much,” Shiro says. “Classes are boring, the professors are all assholes who call you by your seat number, and every kid here is two-faced every which way. You’d hate it here.”

Every word Shiro spews is a lie, all save for the population. Classes were interesting enough to distract Shiro from his heavy workload and harrowing thoughts, most classes were small enough that the professors knew them on a first name basis, and every person Shiro came into contact with was sweeter than sugar. But Keith doesn’t need to know that. Shiro has kept quiet about most of his college experience so far, and he’s thankful for that choice.

“I breathed the wrong way in the library yesterday and ten heads swiveled at me like they were straight out of _The Exorcist_. Shit’s horrifying.”

Keith snorts on the other end of the line, and Shiro hopes he’s getting to him. He hopes he’s softening the blow that will no doubt plague him for a long time. Shiro can relate.

“Did you compel them with the power of Christ?”

“Ah, you see, I tried that. But they possessed me and now I’m the vessel of the devil,” Shiro says. “How’s it feel courting Satan himself?”

“Pretty hot, if you ask me,” Keith says.

“I—did you just?” Shiro snorts. “Oh my god, that was so bad.”

“You laughed though.”

“Yeah because you said it so seriously.”

When Keith chuckles, Shiro relaxes just a bit. A cool breeze filters through campus as the day nears the last hours of light. He closes his eyes and lets it wash over him and sift through his hair. The air smells so sweet here.

“Hey,” Shiro says softly when he opens his eyes. He mulls over what he wants to say. “This doesn’t define you, okay? They don’t know you like I do, they don’t know how brilliant you are. Not giving you the golden seal of approval is only going to hurt them in the end.”

Keith takes a deep breath. “Shiro—”

“No, you need to hear this,” Shiro says. “I know you wanted to come here with me, but fuck this place. You don’t need it, and there’s an even better school out there that is going to want you the second they see your name on their desk. You’ll sweep the nation off their feet with your sweet moves and hard-to-get exterior—“ Keith snorts at that “—and I’ll be your trophy wife cheering you on. This does not hurt your future at all.”

Keith sniffs and then tries to cover it up with a cough. “I mean, yeah but…I wanted to be with you.”

Shiro feels himself break further even as he smiles. “Broaden your selection of schools and then we’ll figure it out.”

“I…okay,” Keith says. Dejection coats his voice like a sweater that shrunk in the wash. “It’s just, you’ve been trudging through school and I can’t even do the simple thing of getting in.”

“It’s not your fault,” Shiro says. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Keith. I love you, but you need to let it go. We’ll figure something out.”

Keith doesn’t respond. For a good minute, Shiro thinks he lost him again, but then his soft voice embraces him. “You’re right. You’re right, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. This isn’t easy to swallow.” A beat. “And neither am I.”

“ _Shiro!_ ”

Laughter erupts from deep inside Shiro’s chest, and it’s the most he’s laughed in ages. Tears well in the corners of his eyes that he has to flick away. From the other end, he can hear the remnants of Keith’s own laughter.

“Sorry, sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re right,” Shiro says with a grin. Keith sighs and Shiro’s grin widens. It softens when Keith clears his throat.

“Hey, uh. Thanks, Shiro,” Keith says. Shiro can practically imagine the gentle blush dusting his cheeks. “And thank you for trying. For me.”

Shiro’s smile dims but it doesn’t fall from his face. “No problem,” he says.

Shiro doesn’t tell Keith that he doesn’t want to try anymore.

 

Three weeks later has Shiro’s side of the room stripped bare. All of his belongings are packed into the car and he’s headed back home. No one knows he’s coming back, and more importantly, no one knows he’s withdrawn from the university.

It’s a Thursday evening when he pulls into the familiar driveway. His parents are pleased by the surprise visit, and when asked, Shiro lies through his teeth that it’s a long weekend. They don’t ask further and tell him to get washed up because Keith has a game tonight. Shiro’s hands itch at the thought of being so close to Keith again. He missed him.

Keith is a sweaty and haphazard mess out on the field, but god does he look beautiful playing. Life takes to Keith like the stars burning in the sky. He’s in his element here, and Shiro wonders if the university ever bothered to watch him live if the story would have ended differently. And he thinks, as Keith scores the final goal that sets his team as victors and watches a wicked smile curl his lips, yes. The story would have been different.

But as one story ends, another begins.

When Keith and his team near the bench, Shiro leans over the railing.

“Hey,” he calls out, and with terrifying speed and precision, florid eyes zero in on him. Shiro gives him a crooked smile. “Have room on your shelf for me tonight? I could use a good polish.”

“Shiro,” Keith murmurs. Shiro can’t hear him, but he has the way Keith’s lips mold around his name memorized down to fine detail. Keith jogs toward him and nearly slams into the wall to get to him. His hands grip the railing and hoist him up to meet him.

“Long time no see,” Shiro says. There’s dirt smudged on Keith’s forehead. “Sorry, I forgot my pompoms—”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence because Keith pulls him into a melting kiss that Shiro does nothing but encourage and his heartbeat overpowers the residual cheers from the stadium.

 

 

Keith asks two days later what Shiro is doing back home since Homecoming is still a few weeks away. He had missed the car packed to the brim with Shiro’s repacked boxes, and only after drinking his fill of Shiro’s surprise visit does he ask. The innocent and curious lilt of the question kills a bit of Shiro’s resolve. They’re sitting out on the front steps of the house with their knees bumping against one another. Shiro sighs with a loose shrug.

“I dropped out.”

Keith’s stare is scalding.

“You _what_?”

“Yeah.” Shiro takes a sip from his water bottle. “I’m home for a while.”

Keith sputters a few incoherent noises. “Shiro, I—” His eyes narrow and Shiro has an interview with fear itself. “What do you mean _‘a while’_ ?” Shiro shrugs. “ _Shiro_.”

A sigh pulls from his lips. “I tried, and I can’t do it.”

Keith’s expression crumbles like the ruined model Shiro destroyed ages ago. He wants to apologize for making such a look make its home in the lines of Keith’s face, but no apology will fix the damage he’s about to dish out.

“It’s only been a few months though,” Keith tries to reason. He sounds as small as he looks. “At least finish a semester first.”

“I said I would try and I did,” Shiro says. They never agreed on a goal or threshold he needed to meet.

“Shiro, if this has anything to do with my acceptance, then—”

“It doesn’t.” A shadow creeps over Keith’s face like a shroud of looming storm clouds, and Shiro realizes too late that he said the wrong thing. Again. “I just. I don’t fit in here anymore.”

Realization is a sickening sight to see when it makes Keith wear such a pained face.

“No,” is all that Keith says. He won’t look at Shiro.

“Keith, I have to.”

“No, you don’t. You belong here, with me.”

“I’ve already made my decision,” Shiro says, and that makes Keith look at him. Red rims his eyes with barely repressed anguish, and it’s then that he understands Keith is holding back so much. He’s about to burst.

“You made it without me.” It’s a statement, not a question, and it’s a red hot knife slipping between Shiro’s ribs.

“I’m sorry.”

“Am I not enough?” Keith asks. The question is such a raw and loaded admission that it catches Shiro off-guard. He takes too long to gather his bearings though because Keith is looking away and closing himself off. “Forget it. You want to leave? Fine, then. Go.”

Shiro shifts and looks down at his hands. He doesn’t even recognize who they belong to anymore. He knew this conversation wasn’t going to be buckets of sunshine and daisies that ended with a searing make out, but he also didn’t think it would leave him feeling so dull.

“I’ll call you whenever I can,” Shiro says, hoping for some eye contact or acknowledgement at least. Whether at school or overseas, the fact that he needs Keith’s presence to survive will never change.

“When do you leave?” Keith asks instead, keeping his gaze locked on the melting horizon. Shiro’s heart drops to accompany his stomach.

“Two weeks. Maybe three. I have to send in my forms.” Keith lifts his gaze at that, his expression unreadable from where Shiro sits no matter how close they are.

“You’ll miss Homecoming.”

Shiro’s smile is small but apologetic. “You don’t even care for dances, though.” It was meant to be teasing, but the flash of hurt that reflects in Keith’s eyes indicates Shiro has, yet again, said the wrong thing.

“You’re right. I don’t.” Shiro lost him. He’s on the other side of a ten-foot brick wall now.

“Keith, I—”

“I’m going home.” Keith stands up and pulls his phone out of his pocket, his fingers fiddling with his earbuds. “Have a good night.”

Shiro watches Keith walk away knowing full well that come two weeks, he’ll be doing the same to Keith.

 

 

Since Shiro wouldn’t be eighteen for another four months, he needed his parents to sign a consent form for him to enlist. He spoke to his recruiter and had already set everything up, he was ready to go the moment he brought the finished paperwork in.

His mother cried when he sat them down and talked it out. She begged him to reconsider, but he stood loyal to his decision. Whether out of desire or pure stubbornness, he isn’t sure, but he was unmovable. His father is the one who picked up the pen first. There was a moment of understanding that passed between them, as if he could hear what Shiro couldn’t put into words. Shiro almost choked when his father signed his name neatly on the black line. His mother’s signature was much shakier as she fought to steady her hand.

Shiro treated them like royalty the rest of the time he had left with them. Keith was scarce. Shiro tried to contact him to at least apologize for the way he handled things, but Keith never picked up. Maybe he wouldn’t, maybe this was the end. Maybe that was for the best.

But a few days before Shiro has to leave, he opens the door to a disheveled Keith standing on his doorstep.

“Whoa, uh, hey?” Shiro asks.

“Hey,” Keith says. He clears his throat. He sounds like he ran a marathon and then some. “I’m sorry.”

Shiro blinks. “What?”

“I don’t want you to leave on a bad note in case you—” Keith frowns and looks away for a brief second. “I just. I love you and I’m still mad, but I know I can’t win this fight so.”

Shiro raises an eyebrow at the extended pause. He tilts his head but jerks when a fist pushes against his chest, right over his heart.

“Come back to me,” Keith whispers. “In one piece. Please.”

Shiro stares down at the fist and then slowly drags his gaze back up to Keith’s face. His hand curls around Keith’s in a firm grip. He pulls and jerks Keith forward to collide into his chest, his arms already enclosing him in a tight hug. Nimble fingers dig into his shirt, desperation dragging lines down his torso as it struggles to find stable purchase. Shiro buries his face into Keith’s hair and sucks in his scent with a greed that makes his hands shake.

“I’ll come back to you,” Shiro says. He presses a bittersweet kiss to Keith’s forehead. “I’ll always come back to you.”

He would rather die than go back on that promise.

 

 

Saying goodbye was hard as goodbyes always are. His family and Keith had seen him off with just the clothes on his back and a rucksack. That had been three months ago. Boot camp had been a rigorous experience that left Shiro dead on his feet for most days, but it got easier as time went on. Now, he is heading out to meet with officers and other recruits to select his pathway and head down that grueling training dilemma.

Shiro picked air defense as his desired pathway. It was the same division Ryou had been a part of, and Shiro felt only right by following his footsteps. He just hopes he could evade the last few steps his brother had taken.

The moment Shiro sets his eyes on the table and approaches, he feels the air change around him. Jaded soldiers fill the room and pay no attention to him, but a select few catch his eye. Particularly, a familiar white buzz cut and a long pink scar that extended over an eye and cheek. When the man turns and makes eye contact, Shiro’s hunch is correct.

This is his brother’s unit. Or had been.

Another man notices Kolivan’s shift in attention and looks over as well. White takes to his face like sheetrock.

“Mother of God,” he whispers.

In the back of Shiro’s head, he swears he hears his brother sigh, “ _Baka Taka_.”


	5. Chapter 5

There’s a disconnect between Shiro and his arm.

Scars wrap up the appendage and curl into his shoulder, the shiny, dull skin blending into a healthier, unblemished pink. There is barely a trace of the original colour that once breathed life into the limb. Shiro will sometimes study the marrings and attempt to find patterns that will somehow turn his arm into less of a disaster; the only thing he succeeds in this weekly ritual is a higher threshold of contempt he holds for himself and his body.

Shiro grunts at the pharmacy bag sitting in the passenger seat of his car. It lies untouched with the mandatory information packet sitting next to it that Shiro will never bother to read. He wouldn’t hesitate throwing it away if he wasn’t worried about his parents finding it. It’s not a story Shiro wants to dive into. He’s just thankful he doesn’t have to dig into the med supply today.

It’s a numb day. There’s always been a part of Shiro that preferred not to feel, and this seems like some type of poetic justice.

Shiro’s hand rests on the gear shift as he pulls into the local coffee shop. He’s long stopped looking down to make sure his hand is even touching anything. He parks next to a black sports car that looks like it belongs on the set of a James Bond movie. The most concerning part is that it’s here in town though. No one _that_ loaded would even think about being caught dead here. Shiro idly wonders if him parking here will piss the owner off at having to walk passed the car of a plebian.

Shiro sneers, unbuckles his seatbelt, and steps out of the car.

The inside of the café is cool and smells of fresh cinnamon rolls. It’s early enough in the morning for the fresh pastries to still be warm from the oven and for Shiro to hopefully miss the incoming morning rush. The lobby is empty save for two people investigating the pastry rack. Shiro immediately pins them as the owners of the car.

One is a girl with cotton candy pink hair pulled into a high bun. Even when messy, it looks like a thousand bucks. Her clothes look straight out of a Vogue summer edition volume, and when she moves an arm, Shiro spots coloured bands tattooed onto her forearm.

Her companion is a man, possibly around Shiro’s age, maybe younger. He has long hair that cascades over his shoulders in wisps of white. His features are sharp and defined, as if sculpted by the best Renaissance artisans to ever breathe. His clothes look like they’re worth more than Shiro’s life and then some, and much to Shiro’s chagrin, he suddenly feels underdressed. The man’s arms are folded over his chest with his hip leaning against the display case while the girl looks on.

“Hurry up and pick something already,” Shiro hears the man say. His voice sounds like molten silver and refined arrogance. The girl huffs beside him.

“You can’t rush perfection.”

“It’s been ten minutes.”

“You’re exaggerating; it’s only been seven.”

“I will leave you here.”

“Unlikely. You can’t afford to let me break my ankle walking back in these heels.”

The man rolls his eyes but says nothing further. Shiro had approached the counter during the exchange, keeping tabs on them out of his periphery. His attention breaks away from them when he places his order with a soft smile and pays. When the girl is still considering the pastries behind the glass, Shiro swallows on a bold decision.

“The sticky buns are always a good choice, they’re never a bad answer,” Shiro says. Powder blue eyes dart up to his face in both surprise and consideration. A lazy grin graces her charming face, and yet somehow Shiro feels like prey under the watchful gaze of a predatory.

“Is that so? Then I guess I’ll get that.”

“I told you to get that five minutes ago,” the man says.

“Yeah, but you don’t look like this.” The girl straightens up and eyes Shiro up and down.

Shiro starts to sweat.

He almost fumbles with the box of pastries and coffee handed to him in his flustered state. When he shuffles to the side to leave, he still feels the watchful gaze on him. The bell chimes above the entrance.

“The hell are you doing out in broad daylight?”

Never has Shiro both been so relieved and tight-wound at hearing that voice. He turns on his heel to find Keith decked out in full uniform. Out of the car seat and ticketless, Shiro can fully appreciate how good Keith looks. Keith’s eyes are trained on the two at the counter, but they dart over to Shiro briefly. Shiro can read the condensed apology in his gaze.

The man turns his head and a smirk slides onto his face. His posture breathes regality and a confidence that straddles the threshold of arrogance. Shiro already doesn’t like him.

“Darling,” he drawls in greeting. “Ezor wanted diabetes.”

_Darling?_

Scratch that, Shiro _hates_ him.

Keith huffs at the pet name. “Please, you eat more of that shit than the two of us combined.”

The man shrugs. “I can afford it.” His eyes track over to Shiro, and Shiro has to fight the urge to square his shoulders and knock that stupid smirk off his equally stupid face. “I should thank Hero over here for saving me thirty more minutes of indecision.”

Shiro blinks and nods dumbly. “Sure.”

Keith glances back at Shiro, expression unreadable, and rolls his shoulders. “You’re disturbing the peace.”

Royal Douchebag, as Shiro deems him (he’s quite proud of the title), waves his hand in a dismissive swipe and slides Ezor his card. Black Amex, of fucking _course_.

“So are you,” he says. There’s a strange familiarity radiating between the two of them, and Shiro is standing in the near damn middle of the crossfire. He looks between the two of them, tenses when R.D. closes the distance and stops only to murmur in Keith’s ear before leaving. Ezor follows him out the door with a pep in her step and a wink aimed at Shiro.

Shiro needs to sit down.

Keith sighs and shakes his head. He turns toward Shiro with a hand on his hip. “Sorry about that. He usually avoids town.”

“Uh huh,” Shiro sounds. His mind is still reeling with what he just witnessed, specifically the playful intimacy that sparked the air when the Keith and R.D. had shared the room. “So. Darling, huh? That your new title of town?”

Keith groans. “Don’t look at me like that,” he says, but there’s no heat to his words. His tone softens a bit, though, and he has the audacity to look contrite. He rubs the back of his neck. “Sorry...you had to find out that way.”

Shiro furrows his eyebrows. Find out that way? Find out what—oh.

_Oh._

Shiro clears his throat and rolls his shoulders in an effortless shrug. “It’s fine.” It’s kind of really not fine. Shiro doesn’t know how it could be fine. “So how long have you two been…?”

He can’t even say it. He’s ashamed, he really does need to grow up.

“About three years,” Keith fills in the gaps for him, thankfully. He fiddles with his holster, the movement reassuring to Shiro that he isn’t the only one uncomfortable with the conversation taking place. “He’s a fashion designer and is constantly traveling everywhere. You met him on the rare time he visits.”

“That would definitely explain the Maserati,” Shiro quips. Keith snorts and nods. “He seems…nice.”

“He’s an asshole, but thanks for being fake for my sake,” Keith says. The corner of his mouth creeps up and it brings with it an onslaught of memories from when they were seven years younger basking in the afterglow of each other’s warmth. Shiro chucks the memory out the window.

“What’s his name?” Shiro asks. That is a dangerous question to ask as Shiro doesn’t want or need to know the details of his past’s new life, but the question is up in the air and he can’t take it back.

“Lotor.” The name slides off Keith’s tongue in harsh syllables yet they manage so roll off elegantly. Shiro blames it on Lotor and not Keith.

“That’s a unique name.”

“I think it’s French or something, who knows. Knowing him, he probably picked the most pretentious name in the book,” Keith says. Shiro loud laughs and he catches the self-pleased smile that sneaks onto Keith’s face. His eyes drift over to the clock on the wall. “Do you have a minute? Hunk’s waiting in the cruiser and I’m supposed to be getting us coffee.”

“Hunk?” Shiro asks mid-blink.

“Yeah, we’re on traffic duty for the morning.”

Hunk. Cruiser. Traffic duty.

_What?_

“Hunk’s a cop, too?” Shiro doesn’t mean for the words to come out sounding so scandalized or for his voice to crack in pitch, and he feels his cheeks threaten to burn at the juvenile embarrassment of it all. Keith raises an eyebrow at him.

“Sure is. He’s been my partner since I finished the academy.”

“Okay, you joining the track is one thing, but Hunk? Soft, conflict-averse Hunk?” Shiro specifies. It would be an understatement to say he’s mystified.

“Don’t underestimate Hunk, he can play Bad Cop better than me sometimes. And you,” Keith says with a jab of his finger, “are on his shit list.”

The blood drains from Shiro’s face only to come rushing back to give him a sick case of whiplash. “Oh no.”

“And there’s no avoiding him because I parked left of your car so eye contact is inevitable.”

“You know, cheeky grins don’t really suit you,” Shiro huffs.

“And deflection seems to be your personal brand these days, huh?” Keith fires back and represents the embodiment of innocence. “We all have to pay our dues.”

“Can I extend my deadline?” Shiro asks. “I’ll happily pay the late fees.”

“Scared, Shirogane?” Keith asks with the coyest of smirks that sets the flowers in Shiro’s lungs on fire. He coughs up the ashes while Keith orders and pays for his drinks.

 

 

Hunk is leaning against the hood of the car with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His skin is a beautiful gold blessed by the sun itself and his hair is still the same as Shiro remembers. His eyes are closed as a soft breeze sifts through the area. Time treated him well.

“Hey,” Keith says as they step out of the air conditioned café and into the morning heat. “Look what the cat dragged in.”

Hunk peeks an eye open when Keith approaches, but then both eyes force open as Shiro comes into his line if vision. He keeps a safe distance, a laughable four feet that will definitely not help him avoid an altercation. Hunk’s stare is just as eviscerating and intense as Keith’s, but it’s exponentially worse because he knows he pissed off one of the nicest people he’s ever had the honor of calling his friend. Standing before him like a convict awaiting condemnation was some sort of masochistic joke. Shiro tries to buffer the inevitable by speaking first.

“Hey, Hunk.” He offers the smallest of nervous smiles. “Long time no see.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” Hunk says. His arms unfurl from his chest and Shiro sees the full extent of just how powerful they are. He has no doubt that one wrong move could have his head ripped straight from his shoulders.

“Yeah,” Shiro says. He looks down and bites the hangdog smile that makes his cheeks hurt. “I know it’s not much, but I’m sorry. For being stupid.”

“Self-awareness is a good start.” Hunk pushes off the car and Shiro balks. He keeps his feet cemented to the ground out of sheer vanity. The distance between them is swallowed by four long strides, and Shiro is mentally preparing himself to sport a wicked black eye for the next few weeks. Instead, he gets a shortest stare down of his life followed by a hug so crushing it makes his crash and burn stunt in the military look like child’s play.

Shiro can only manage a surprised “Oh.” His arms flare out on instinct to keep hos coffee and pastry box from tumbling to the ground  

“It’s good to see you,” Hunk says. Shiro is touched. He’d be even more touched if the hug wasn’t cutting off his circulation. He’s about to mention it, but thankfully Hunk let’s go and holds him in place with two large hands swamping his shoulders. “But ever go M.I.A like that again and I’ll personally make that ‘M’ a ‘K’ because not cool, dude.”

“Yeah,” Shiro says, feeling the heat radiating from his own flushed face. “Yeah, I got it. Won’t happen again.” Shiro is answered with a strong squeeze on his shoulder that ignites the frayed nerves buried beneath his skin, but he doesn’t bat an eye.

They talk for a little while longer, catching up for old time's sake. He learns that Hunk and Keith were the only two who went to the police academy. Keith was originally striving for firefighter, but the second Lance had joined, he switched tracks. Something about the marrow-deep one-sided rivalry still existing between Lance and Keith warms Shiro's rattled bones. Even after all these years, Lance still annoys the fuck out of Keith. Pidge works with Lance, Allura went to Harvard for law, and Matt's knee-deep in his residency for med school. California, he thinks Hunks says.

Their idle chatter is interrupted by the shrill ringtone of Hunk's phone. He flashes Keith and Shiro an apologetic wince, saying he needs to take it, and walks back to the car for a makeshift privacy. Keith clicks his tongue and fleetingly takes his attention away from the cooling coffee in his hands.

"That wasn't so hard, was it?"

Shiro feels his eye twitch at how smugness saturates Keith's voice like a sponge.

"I was hoping he'd decapitate me, to be honest," Shiro says evenly.

"You always were one for the easy way out."

"That's the biggest lie you've ever told," Shiro says. He looks at Keith with a refined wistfulness. "I dated you, after all."

Pale lips hover and freeze above the lid of the coffee cup. Dark eyes narrow and ransack Shiro's expression, trying to dig deeper at the peculiar concession but no answer is found; or at least, no answer is satisfactory. Keith sucks his teeth, and Shiro's eyes follow the movement. He looks away when Keith's eyes flicker, and he realizes perhaps embarrassingly late that it was a baited trap. Thankfully, Shiro was only close enough for a gentle nudge, and he escaped before the trap could snap his neck in two.

Out of his periphery, he watches Keith finally bring the drink to his lips.

"So," Keith starts. His voice is a sudden breach in collective quietness that Shiro's head swivels toward him with a minute jolt. Keith tilts his head back and studies him. Shiro can see a battle brewing behind those pretty little eyes, hesitation parting his lips but keeping words wrapped in a tight noose. Then, he cuts the rope with a deep breath and inspects his coffee. “Do you want to catch up sometime?”

The question is so random and unexpected that Shiro nearly spits his coffee. Instead, he licks the heat from his lips and levels Keith with an impassive, searching gaze. There’s no joke or ulterior motive to be found in that deep, compelling stare, but he suspects it's more out of courtesy for Shiro's parents and response to the impromptu leftover run than him actually wanting to hang out with him.. Keith’s eyebrows raise in challenge. It's almost hard to believe that just a week prior, Keith had served him the the ultimatum of a lifetime after verbally filleting him. Almost.

“Unless the almighty marine really is scared.”

Shiro huffs, rolls his eyes, and mentally mutters the age old "not a marine" line in his head. He meets the challenge with a heady stare. “Not on your life.” He tosses his empty cup in the trash and flashes Keith a winning smile. “I’ll see your ass on Saturday then. Unless you’re scared.”

“Not on your life.”

 

 

Shiro is terrified.

Events from this morning taunt him for the rest of the day, switching from Keith’s playful attitude to the new addition of Keith’s love life. But new is a misleading word, it’s only news to Shiro. Shiro, who has no stable ground in Keith’s life anymore, let alone in a romantic sense. And yet, the sheer amount of petty jealousy that surged through him on waves of adrenaline is both equally telling and concerning.

There is a part of Shiro that always knew he never killed his feelings for Keith. He was a strong tether to home, a beacon to shore on his darkest nights. Leaving him behind was the hardest and worst possible decisions Shiro had ever made. Instead of letting go and allowing time to heal, Shiro buried his feelings in the sand and left a big, red X over the grave that he only pretended to ignore. The flame dulled from oxygen deprivation but never extinguished because Shiro would occasionally breathe life back into it. It never reclaimed the vigor it once held, but the wick still burned.

And now the grave is exhumed and the flame grows in size. This, in part, is why Shiro was so reluctant to come home.

The worst part of accepting this is that it’s a package deal. No matter how Shiro looks at it, Keith has moved on. Every person who told him that Keith would always love him, that Keith would never be able to move on, was wrong. Even their friends who had told him the same thing, who called him while he was away to make things right with Keith, to come back home—they were all wrong.

Perhaps none of them knew Keith all that well, Shiro especially.

This revelation is unfair for the both of them. It would do neither of them any good to open Pandora’s box and unleash the demons inside. He thinks of the time Keith called him to apologize over and over for not being good enough—for not living up to Shiro’s expectations of him—and getting rejected from CSU. Shiro told him that he loved him but needed to let it go. For once, maybe Shiro should heed his own advice.

Shiro leans his head against the wall and stares up at the ceiling. He spots the faded stars decorating the pasty ceiling that he and Ryou put up, trying their very best to remake the night sky. He taught Keith the constellations with the map above his head. Now there are stickers of the whole solar system revolving around the tacky stars, some peeling off while others are glued for life.

“I love you,” he says to the stars. “But I need to let you go.” Silence answers him with only his vindictive conscience there to repeat the sentiment in his head.

He sighs and shifts his attention to the prescription bag sitting on the bedside table, still unopened from this morning. He worries his lip between his teeth before he reaches a hesitant hand out to snag the bag. He pulls the bottle out and blue pills trapped in the gaudy orange bottle sing to him. Popping the cap off, he pours one into the palm of his hand. He considers the tiny pill. For the most part since arriving into town, he hasn’t needed the medication as of yet but Shiro knew that would change in time. It always did.

He swallows the pill dry and tries not to dry-heave at the terrible taste that scrapes the back of his throat. Instead of getting up for a glass of water, he lies his head down on his pillow and sinks into the bed.

There is no pain in his arm to dull, but it eases the ache in his chest just as well.


	6. Chapter 6

Saturday dinner is nice.

Grilled salmon and a Midwestern mac and cheese that has a bite familiar to a baby scorpion—Shiro does damage control in form of a concentrated stare on the wood grain of the kitchen table and reaching for his water glass every two minutes. Judging by the smug smirk Keith sends his way on each occasion that their eyes meet, he knows that Keith is more than aware that the water is doing absolutely nothing.

Since coming home, this is the first instance that Shiro has been able to sit down and have dinner. Even though a year has passed since his discharge, Shiro’s still been living in military time. Different meal times plus his warped appetite, he’s only had light meals throughout the day and has promptly declined dinner for the most part. Luckily, on the nights he did manage to curve his appetite to sit down and eat, the meals were small and simple to match the long, tiring day. Before tonight, Shiro can’t remember the last time he fully enjoyed a dinner that wasn’t pumped full of enough salt to plague a third world nation with hypertension—but more importantly, it tastes good and does’t turn to ashen mush on his tongue.

That’s more than good enough in his book, even if the end result is him sweating the Nile.

He sits next to his mother at the table. Directly across from him sits Keith, who is currently listening to his father explain the difference between jigs and buzzbaits. Shiro never pinned Keith as the fishing type, but it was a very quiet and isolating hobby. It definitely has its attractive qualities, although envisioning Keith trying to be patient through hours of zero result is a humoring thought. His father is very adamant about fishing, on the other hand, and he always took Shiro out to the lake every summer until his senior year. One time, Shiro fell out of the boat during one uneventful trip and scared all of the fish within a two-mile radius. His father laughed at his drenched silhouette the entire one-hour drive home.

Keith’s gaze flickers to Shiro, his cheek propped on his fist and obscuring his mouth, but Shiro can make out the barest hints of a smile. It reflects in his eyes like freshly polished amethyst. Shiro returns the soft smile and shakes his head when his father starts to share stories about how terrible of a fisherman Shiro himself is.

Dinner continues on in peace, and gentle chatter fills the kitchen as the minutes tick by into late evening. Shiro adds his own two cents when his honor is on the line, and he finds himself loosening the tight gears of his resolve and relaxing into the soothing atmosphere the kitchen provides. Progress, albeit it little but progress nonetheless.

The hair prickles on his neck at the uncomfortable sensation of being stared down. He adverts his gaze only to find the culprit. Keith’s eyes are locked on Shiro’s left hand holding his fork. They track every movement, every twitch of muscle beneath his skin. Shiro can see the gears turning in his skull, nothing but pure calculation and curiosity to be found in his scrutiny. Then those eyes flicker up and level with Shiro’s, and it takes every ounce of his core not to balk. He simply tilts his head in question, and once Keith finally returns his attention to his plate, Shiro tries not to sweat his skin off while he finishes his meal. The food now feels too big and chunky for his throat.

Shiro helps clear the table as he volunteers for dish duty while Keith helps with putting away the leftovers. He turns to the sink to hide his smile when his mother makes a routine plate for Keith to take home, a brusque comment about his physique rolling off her tongue for what must be the hundredth time. Although Shiro might have to disagree with her; Keith filled out quite nicely.

Hand around the faucet, Shiro is filling the basin up with soapy water when he feels Keith walk up beside him. Keith rocks back on his heels and nods toward the dirty dishes.

“Want some help?” he asks. Shiro stares at him dumbly for a hot minute, and only when sharp eyebrows arch toward a messy fringe does Shiro remember his ability to speak. He casts a cursory glance over his shoulder. They’re the only ones in the kitchen now. Keith must have told his parent to relax. Somehow, Shiro is both grateful and anxious by this.

“You wash, I’ll dry?”

Keith huffs. “Making me do all the work?”

“I’ll have you know that drying is very serious work,” Shiro says. He shuffles to the side to allow Keith room. The man fits in the space beside him like a final puzzle piece and carries with him a comfortable warmth that penetrates Shiro’s right side. He tosses him the sponge while grabbing the dish towel for himself.

Keith snorts. “Right, sure.”

Silence wraps around them and digs its claws into their ribs as they fall into routine, Keith washing with Shiro on rinse and drying duty. Plates and silverware clink together as they are washed and passed between the two men. For a good solid ten minutes, that and the splash of water is the only sound to be exchanged. Shiro isn’t certain what he was expecting, if he’s honest with himself, but this is okay. More than okay.

Then Keith decides to break that.

“So when do you go back?” he asks. The question is a gentle prod, no malice or heated subtext to be found. Had it been a week or two ago, every negative emotion known to mankind would have been swimming in the words. Shiro glances at him.

“Huh?”

“Aren’t you on leave?” Keith clarifies. He’s looking at Shiro now, his vivid irises a kaleidoscope of obscure emotion that are difficult to get a solid, accurate reading from. Shiro tries not to frown or let the heavy lure of dreadful memories drag him back into a sea of wallowing torment.

“Ah, no,” Shiro says. He pats himself on the back for keeping his voice steady and nonchalant. “I was discharged.”

“Discharged?”

“Yeah, honorably. Still have my pension at least. Military pays really well to keep their failures under tight wraps.” He means it as a joke, but sardonicism is a parasite that Shiro hosts all year round. It bleeds into the words and sinks its needle-like fangs into the flesh of the impending statement. Shiro almost winces. “Sorry.”

Keith, bless his soul, doesn’t even blink. “What happened?”

Shiro lets the question hang in the air for a moment, pretending to contemplate on how to phrase his answer. The simple truth is that he’s had to retell and relive it so many times that now he can answer in the vaguest sense without jumpstarting an uninvited reliving.

“Jet crash,” Shiro says. “Was on medical leave for a while until deemed unfit to continue, and they sent me on my way.” That was a year and three months ago, and now here he is: washing dishes with his ex-boyfriend who he left on the doorstep while he tried to play hero.

But everyone knows that a hero is only defined by tragedy.

“I’m sorry.”

Shiro hadn’t been expecting that. He chances a glance at Keith who looks genuinely troubled, and with it brings a tightening pain to Shiro’s chest. Tongue too big for his dry mouth, Shiro swallows down the suffocating jitter in his throat. He can’t look at him.

“It’s okay,” he says, softly. “I’ve made peace with it.” And he has. If only the demons in his head would follow suit.

They fall back into the calm quiet they practiced earlier, but now there’s a discernable somber taint to the air. Shiro focuses his attention on drying the porcelain plates with a bit too much force than necessary. Keith is on a roll tonight, it seems, because he’s the first to speak up again.

“You use your left hand now.” The bomb had been in mere, shambled parts, but Keith assembled it carefully, piece by piece, and threw it directly in Shiro’s face. He falters in his movements for the briefest of seconds before shaking it off.

“I’ve always used my left hand. It’s what it’s there for.”

“Not what I meant,” Keith says. Shiro can feel those steady eyes on him. “You’re right-handed, but you ate dinner with your left.”

“Psychoanalyzing me through my eating habits now, huh?” Shiro tries on a smile but it doesn’t fit right and feels too cynical, even for his own tastes. “C’mon, Keith. I thought you better than that.”

Unease makes Shiro’s stomach its personal punching bag. The unwavering, clinical gaze on his left hand during dinner _had_ meant something, and that something was terrifying. Keith was able to piece together in mere minutes the scrambled puzzle of one of Shiro’s greatest failures, and Shiro doesn’t have a failsafe this time. Somehow, he feels more naked than he did drunk and filter-less when Keith pummeled him with hard truths.

Keith is quiet, and Shiro doesn’t plan on breaking it. The hair on the back of his neck prickles with awareness, knowing full well that Keith’s stare is still focused on him, but he concentrates on the dish in his hand—a dish that is the driest it will ever be and has been dry for two minutes, but there is no new dish to be found. And then—

“Shiro.”

Shiro swallows and looks up. Mauve turns dark in a despair that transcends generic depression into condensed pain. He never wants Keith to look at him like that again.

It’s then that Shiro realizes the hand gripping his forearm.

He’s going to be sick.

Setting the plate on the counter and dropping the damp dish towel beside it, bitter acceptance drapes itself across Shiro lie a coronation. “How long has your hand been there?” he asks.

“About a minute,” Keith says.

Shiro nods and rakes his left hand through his hair. He exhales on an exhausted sigh. He cannot believe they’re having a heart-to-heart over dish duty. Whatever higher power exists, if there even is one, Shiro wishes they would stop jacking off to his misery and ill fortune. He watches pale fingers squeeze gently around his arm before dropping.

Shiro doesn’t feel a thing.

“Can you feel at all?” Keith asks.

“Sometimes,” Shiro says. It isn’t a lie, but he omits the pain flares that come with the price of sensation.

It’s a rare experience that saves itself for the coldest days married to rain, bringing with it a mind-splitting pain that has him dissociating for days after. But those days have thankfully become more scarce as time trickles by. Just thinking about the pain has Shiro thinking back to the pill bottle stashed in his side table drawer.

What Keith doesn’t know won’t hurt him.

Determination is a familiar look on Keith, but seeing the emotion painted in refined streaks across his face with his gaze pinned to Shiro’s hand resting against the edge of the sink is an unsettling experience. Shiro’s fingers twitch on instinct, and Keith’s eyes dart back up to his face. A harrowing decision had been made, and had Shiro not any context, he would assume Keith had chosen to walk straight into someone’s knife.

“Are you tired?” he asks.

Shiro blinks and looks at the clock. “No? It’s only seven.”

“Good,” Keith says with a pleased nod. “I’m taking you to the field.” There’s no room for argument, Keith has already decided for the both of them.

“I…okay?”

Keith nods again as if that was the best answer Shiro has given him since grade school.

“Cool. Grab your jacket, I’ll drive.”

Shiro watches the man walk over to the door and slip his shoes and jacket on. An eager hand digs into a leather pocket, the jingle of keys ricocheting off the walls and prickling Shiro’s eardrums. Turning around, Keith’s hands flare his jacket out in a half-shrug when Shiro hasn’t moved a hair. Shiro swallows and dumbly moves forward to get ready.

Only once Shiro’s heel slipped into his second shoe does Keith turn on his heel. Shiro follows him and closes the kitchen door behind him on the way out. He gets two steps down before he stops dead.

“No way,” Shiro breathes out. “You still have it?”

“I’d rather be Lance’s roommate than get rid of it,” Keith says as he approaches the driver side.

‘It’ being a cherry red 1987 Buick Regal that Keith had saved an entire year’s worth of earnings to buy. He worked his ass of nearly every day at Sal’s, earning his keep in tips and stashing them away in a jar labeled “Car $$” that sat on the floor of his small closet. They had been walking through a neighborhood when Keith spotted the car for sale on an otherwise vacant lawn. From that day forth, he was hell-bent on making it his own and when he did, he commandeered Shiro many days during an uneventful summer vacation to putty and buff the holes rust ate into the vehicle as well as do engine work. It took over a year and a sobbing wallet to get it road ready.

If Shiro is being completely honest, it had been a piece of shit. Decorated in a decade’s worth of rust, an emerald door that clashed with the chipped black finish—a salvage from and even older car—a dent in the bumper the size of Kansas, busted taillights, plush seats riddled with cigarette burns, and the back windshield spiderwebbed beyond repair, this car was a mess that Shiro would turn his nose away from. That was only exterior, too. The inside was just as bad if not worse. Shiro had taken one look under the hood and lost eight years of his life.

Keith had looked Shiro dead in the eye and asked if it was worth saving. Shiro had shrugged in honesty and told him it would take more time, money, and patience than Buddha could ever wish to have, but it was doable. He refrained his opinion of whether or not it was worth it.

Keith then turned around and told the seller that he was interested. It was debatably the biggest decision Keith had made in all of his fifteen years of existence, but all that hard work paid off.

Shiro recalls, with the most vivacity, of shoving Keith’s face into the backseat cushions and reaming him from behind.

He grabs that memory by the head and shoves it under icy water when Keith sends him a strange look. His hip is cocked against the car door, waiting. Shiro hops off the steps and makes his way around the bend of the car, admiring the glossy finish of the hood under the dying sun as he heads to the passenger door. Once inside, he buckles in and settles against the new leather seats. The inside is just as gorgeous as it had been back in high school, but there’s a new shine to it that sings of recent upgrade. Shiro has to school himself not to run his fingers over the dash in nostalgic appraisal.

Only after he’s buckled in to fate does he realize he has no idea what “the field” means.

“So, the field, huh?” Shiro asks once Keith is inside and starts the car.

“Yeah.”

When no elaboration is given, Shiro taps his fingers against a jean clad thigh. “What, uh—” He clears his throat. “What are we doing at said field?”

Keith doesn’t spare him a glance as he twists in his seat and grabs the back of Shiro’s headrest. His eyes are focused on the rear windshield as he backs up. “I’m going to murder you and turn your corpse into a mannequin for tacky 70’s workout fashion.”

Shiro’s eyes go wide and his jaw drops to the car floor.

Wow _._

“Uhh…”

“I’m thinking highlighter yellow zebra print leotard for the first outfit. What do you think?”

Keith’s eyes flicker to Shiro as he drops his hand back to the stick shift, and Shiro gets front row seats to see that godforsaken mouth creep up into a sideways grin. God damn him.

“Relax, Marine. We’re just going to play a game.”

“Coming from you, that’s more terrifying than what you said first.” Shiro picks his jaw back up from the floor.

Keith rolls his eyes but the grin stays. “Baby.”

The jest is meant to be mockery, no weight carried with it, but it sends Shiro’s stomach flying through somersaults like a beginner gymnastics league. In the deeper recesses of his mind, he mourns the days that Keith finally overcame his determinate shyness and willingly called Shiro the petname on the daily.

The memory of the backseat indiscretion resurfaces and pops its ugly head above the water. Shiro strangles it until it has the spine of seaweed.

They pull up to the old town park that doubles as a little league field as well as the popular barbeque spot. It’s surprisingly empty, even given the time. There’s usually always someone around, but not another soul is to be seen. Keith seems pleased by that.

“So, can I know what we’re doing here now?” Shiro asks.

Keith parks the car and taps the steering wheel. “Football.”

“Football?” Shiro echoes, incredulous. “Do you even know how to play?”

The man scoffs. “Not that kind. We’re playing _real_ football.” He unbuckles his seatbelt and slips out of the Regal. Shiro sits there for a little longer, trying to decide if he landed himself in another dimension or timeline, but he hears Keith open the trunk, and he decides this turn of events is unavoidable. He exits the car just in time to see the trunk slam shut. In Keith’s hands is a black and white ball the size of his head.

_For christ sake._

Shiro has a personal vendetta against the people who named the individual sports.

“Your game, huh?” Shiro asks. He sets his hands on his hips and watches Keith twirl the ball on one finger. "You know, you could have just said soccer."

“My town, my rules,” he says with a simple shrug. “If you can beat me, you can stay.”

Shiro chokes. “ _What?_ You told me I just needed to stop being a shitshow.”

Keith hums, feigning a thoughtful dig through him memories. “Changed my mind.” He’s grinning again.

“You were the best player in varsity, and I don’t remember everything,” Shiro says, doing his damnedest to sway Keith’s decision. It doesn’t work.

“Guess you’ll have to make do. Here, take first kick off. I’m feeling generous.” Keith tosses the ball, and Shiro catches it soundly in his hands. His eyes track Keith as the man drags his foot across both ends of the field. “These lines are our goals. Not that you’ll see mine at all.”

“Oh, it’s on,” Shiro says and meets him in the middles.

He sets the soccer ball down on the ground and has an unnecessary stare off with Keith, but it makes him feel better. He remembers some bare bones of the rules, but those bones are brittle and cracked. And going by that sleazy smirk, Keith is going to make this game Shiro’s own personal hell.

Shiro attempts to recall how Keith used to play. All he can grasp is that his tackling nature beaten into him from the aggressions of football is not tolerated in this sport. A strategy leveled on fraying strings brews in his head, but Keith’s smug, “Come one, old man” is as nauseating as it is igniting.

With a swift kick to the ball that is probably more forceful than it needs to be, Shiro moves across the field with the ball at the lace of his shoes. Keith waits—Shiro measures the pause in three heartbeats—with his eyes locked on Shiro before he jogs after him. His eyes track the ball and Shiro’s feet. He hums in appraisal.

“You remember how to dribble. Nice.”

“I’ve watched you in your element enough to see your technique,” Shiro shoots back.

“What a sap.” Shiro can hear the eye roll in Keith’s voice.

He sees Keith lean closer to take a steal at the ball, but Shiro turns his body last minute to shield the ball. One sharp kick has the ball sailing over the goal line and scoring him the first point. Instead of pride and gloating rights, he cuts Keith an exasperated stare.

“Don’t mock me,” he says. “You gave me that point.”

“How observant of you,” Keith says. He inspects his fingers and flicks the dirt out from under a nail with the most pompous disinterest.

“Why?” Shiro asks.

“Can’t break you completely of hope. I’m not that cruel.” Keith smiles, teeth sharper than the jagged rocks at the base of a cliff. It reads as feral as the grin of a prowling wolf before it taints its fleeten teeth crimson.

Shiro suspects he’s courted death too long in his life when the intrusive thought that he wishes his blood was on Keith’s teeth, wishes those pearly canines would sink into his jugular and tear, assaults his brain.

_Get your head in the game, Shiro._

Only, he isn’t sure which game he’s playing anymore.

“Cute, but I don’t need your pity play,” Shiro says.

“Fine, no more handicap.”

Shiro winces at the word choice. Keith doesn’t notice.

Shiro fetches the ball and meets Keith back in the middle. He sets it down in the middle and gets into defensive, eyes trained on Keith’s legs to watch for which direction he’ll lean into.

Keith’s game is just as good as it had been when he captained for Altea High. All that’s missing is the colorful uniform and matching arm-band that declared to all his status on the team. Shiro recalls one drunken night buried in Keith’s naked warmth that he jokingly told Keith he should get it tattooed on his arm. Keith “jokingly” punched Shiro in the solar plexus.

The ball careens past Shiro as Keith books it down the field, much more graceful compared to Shiro’s borderline floundering. He tries to keep up and snatch the ball away, but Keith is swift as he is deadly in execution. He scores the goal in half the time it took Shiro.

He is going to have his ass handed to him in a can.

“Nice shot,” Shiro says.

“Thanks,” Keith says. “That’s all you’re gonna see for the rest of the game.”

Despite himself, Shiro laughs.

Keith was right for the most part; Shiro would like to say he lost count of the score, but Keith kept him up to speed with every quick goal he scored. It was currently 7:3, and Shiro’s fairly proud he managed to score those two goals. He fought for his life to score just that many. He thinks he would have scored more if Keith wouldn’t penalize him for breathing, which he almost doesn’t mind on account that this is the most he’s heard Keith laugh since running back into him.

“Foul move,” Keith calls out. Shiro stops the ball with his heel and groans. Scratch that, he minds completely about the unfair play.

“Now what?”

“Tackles are illegal.”

“All I did was bump your shoulder.”

“Mm, nice try but no,” Keith says and snatches the ball back for himself. Shiro is three feet from the goal.

Five minutes later, Keith tackles Shiro but when he calls out foul move, Keith only smirks as he scores another goal.

Talk about foul play.

Back in the middle for their last kick off, Shiro very seriously looks at Keith with his hands on his knees. He nods toward the ball.

“My fate is one goal away,” Shiro says.

“The game’s already over for you, I’m just humoring you.” Keith matches Shiro’s stance and meet’s him at eye level.

Shiro rolls his shoulders. “My honour’s on the line, here.”

“What honour?”

Shiro raises his eyebrows and glances back down at the ball. “You understand I have to do whatever it takes.” Keith narrows his eyes in question. Shiro’s answer comes swift and unforgiving as he surges forward, tucks the ball into his elbow like a football, and books it down the field.

“Hey!” Keith yells, and Shiro doesn’t have to look back to know he’s being followed. “You can’t do that!”

“Watch me!” Shiro calls back. The corners of his lips twitch up into a stupid grin, and he loud laughs when he feels a steel grip clamp down on his shoulder. He takes one more step despite the pull, but the momentum has him slipping in the dirt. Gravity pulls him down by the waist, and he last minute swivels on his heel so his back will take the brunt of the blow instead of his face. He takes Keith down with him, a loud wheeze spilling from his lips when Keith crashes into his stomach. The soccer ball flies out of his grip and rolls away into the field.

Shiro and Keith take one look at each other before they burst into crazed laughter. Tears leak at the corners of their eyes and stream down their cheeks, their bodies erupting into earthquakes as absurdity plagues their heads. Shiro wipes a dirt-covered hand down his face, his cheeks burning with strain.

“I cannot believe you just footballed my soccer ball like a heathen,” Keith says through his laughter-ridden voice.

“I had to do whatever it takes.”

“Yeah, you’re supposed to do that while playing by the rules.”

“Like you did?” Shiro peers up at Keith between his fingers and bites his smile. Keith shoves his face to the side.

“Shut up.”

“Nah, I don’t think I will.” Shiro laughs into the dead grass as Keith pushes his face further into the ground. “Bad sport.”

Keith lets up, and Shiro rolls the kink out of his neck. He looks up at him in feigned resignation.

“Guess this means I have to leave, huh?”

Keith doesn’t answer for a hot minute, and Shiro doesn’t mind all that much. He’s too busy staring up at the sharp contours of his face illuminated by the orange light of the setting sun. Eyelashes long and thick, they cast triangles over the hill of a cheek. He’s warm too, settled between Shiro’s thighs and pressing against him.

He’s beautiful.

Then Keith is gone, pushed back onto his feet and dusting the dirt from his clothes.

“You can stay,” Keith hurriedly says. He reaches a hand down to Shiro as an afterthought, and Shiro takes it with a slightly hesitant grip. Keith pulls him up to his feet.

“Thanks,” Shiro says, to which Keith nods.

“Yeah. Thanks for humoring me.”

“No problem.”

They stand there for a moment, no words coming easily to them, and they decide to head back when awkwardness rears its ugly head at them. Shiro fears he might have accidentally spoken his thoughts for he has no idea what had spooked Keith so much. But Keith says nothing on the matter, so neither will Shiro.

The drive back is uneventful, conversation a dead word to their vocabulary. Music drifts from the car radio to keep the silence from skinning them alive. They pull up outside of Shiro’s house, but Keith makes no move to kill the engine or unbuckle. Shiro figures as much as Keith doesn’t live there, but the dead habit still leaves a sour taste in his mouth.

“Thanks for the game,” Shiro says as he exits the car. His hand is on the door, about to shut it before he stops himself and turns around. Keith’s eyes are round amethysts piercing his soul. He almost falters. “Are we—” He swallows down his nerves. “So are we friends again?”

Anxiety is rapidly becoming Shiro’s best friend and lover under the intensive stare that executes him like a lounge in the electric chair. He sees uncertainty in Keith’s eyes, but his soft words scream it into a megaphone.

“Go get some sleep, Shiro.”

Shiro’s hand twitches against the door which he masks with a light tap to the metal. “Right. Good night.” He closes the door and grits his teeth that the window is down so Keith can still hear him. Turning on his heel, he holds his breath to keep from muttering lectures to himself. About seven steps away from the car, he hears Keith move.

“Hey.”

Shiro stops and looks over his shoulder. Keith’s resting his arms on the steering wheel, his fingers playing with the finish on the dashboard.

“We’ll work on it,” he says.

The cold grip on Shiro’s heart eases. “Okay.” He waves Keith goodnight as the engine purrs with the shift in gear. Keith is pulling onto the street once Shiro is inside.

Shiro drags himself up the stairs through the dark. His parents must have already retired to bed as there are no lights or souls to be found inside the mausoleum they call home. He closes the bedroom door behind him and plops unceremoniously down on his bed, his charcoal eyes unfocused on the dead, plastic stars stuck to his ceiling. He shifts, one leg falling off the bed to dangle like a fishhook for the monster under the bed. Shiro wishes it would eat him right about now.

He’s been hard since Keith turned down the driveway.

Priding himself in keeping it down since the tumble on the field seems far too inappropriate, even given the situation. Sweat collects on his brow when his body remembers the warmth and weight of Keith’s body pressing down, down, _down_ —

He’s pathetic. There’s no way around this, he’s the pathetic, sad shell of a past life and waiting for a demon to possess the carcass left behind. Does it count if he himself is the demon? Because right now, he wants to destroy every ounce of respect he might have possibly earned back and taint every living entity within a ten mile radius.

_Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it._

_Don’t you fucking dare._

Self-control and moral high ground are such fickle things, both by definition and personal individuality, and Shiro clearly demonstrates that by giving himself a painful squeeze and fucking his fist until jets of white stain the front of his shirt.

_Pathetic._

It’s too rough, too painful to be satisfying, too exposing of how vile and disgusting he is. If he hated himself before, then Shiro just stole the Grim Reaper’s scythe and is carving open his throat.

Shiro stares at his soiled hand. “I am doing a phenomenal job at letting you go.” He stares up at the lifeless dollar store stars on his ceiling as if they hold the answers to his decaying life, but all he is met with was the deafening reality that he is a failed punchline.

Wiping his hand on his shirt and tucking himself back into semi-decency, Shiro rolls over to condemn himself to a restless dream full of worrying thoughts. This becomes the norm for most nights a week, a self-interrogative punishment that increases in severity the more he lets his state of mind conquer.

 

 

When next Saturday rolls around and the crisp ring of a phone pierces the dull air, Shiro answers it with clammy hands and resolution encasing his trampled nerves.

"What would you like to talk about today?" his therapist asks after polite greetings are out of the way. Shiro takes a deep breath and shifts the phone in his ear.

"I'd like to talk about Keith."


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the long wait for an update, but hopefully I can get back on track with a weekly or bi-weekly post schedule. Thank you all so, so much for being patient and wonderful!

Keith has always struggled with the perception that he isn’t enough and will never have the capacity to change that, an external locus of control that plays overseer of his scrappy life. It’s more of a muted internalized court battle than anything else—a soft patter of rain in place of a downpour that dissolves his flesh and leaves mold to grow on his bones in the aftermath—but some days it rears its ugly head and tramples him with the ferocity of a maelstrom. After it wreaks its havoc and leaves him in ruins, it gnaws on his heart for days.

Keith suspects this tripwire of a perspective took its first gulping breath after years of his father’s egregious drinking and constant shovels of grief he piles Keith under. His father can nitpick about anything, be it his clothes or his attitude to something completely out of his control like the sudden raise in gas prices, and it’s almost guaranteed to sweep back to one thing: his mother.

Whether his father’s hand always knew the shape of a beer can or if the alcoholism took a personal liking to him after Keith’s birth, Keith will never know. What Keith does know—as his father has grilled into him until his skin is burnt and flaking off with the breeze—is that he blames Keith for her death.

Science and every privileged person living a fairly painless life (with which Keith always notes that both parents are alive, involved, and doting) tell him that he is not at fault, that he in no shape or form is responsible for his mother’s life. Keith takes their words and throws them in the trash while maintaining eye contact. Because at the end of the day, the nauseating stench of stale beer and an acidic guilt trip await him at home, and believing the garbage they tell him will only open another door that leads to further disappointment.

That’s a fair part as to why Keith knows next to nothing about his mother. Each time he has asked, they all ended poorly. The one time he got anywhere was during a sober spell when his father attempted rehab to prevent the impending probability of cirrhosis. Keith knows she had long blonde hair that shimmered like the stars of the Crab Nebula, and she was tough enough to land anyone on their ass. A smile had gifted his father’s face at some forgotten memory, but one look at Keith had snuffed whatever magic that had transpired.

_“Not that it matters anymore. She’s gone.”_

_“Of course it matters, Dad—”_

_“Go to bed.”_

_“But it’s only five.”_

_“I don’t care.”_

Keith will never be enough to fill the niche in his father’s chest; instead, he only takes a knife to the edges and expands the hole. Keith can barely recognize his father anymore pitted against the black. He wonders if he’s destined to the same vocation.

NOT ENOUGH.

Today is one of those days where Keith screams into the void and the void amplifies the noise, vicious and thirsty for the blood in his veins. But today is substantially worse.

Opening the door to a sopping wet Shiro had definitely not been on Keith’s itinerary for the day, but Keith is constantly changing for the sake of Shiro that it’s hardly a detriment anymore. But this, it paralyzes him. They stay huddled in front of the door until Keith’s own shirt clings to his skin, and Keith ushers Shiro up to get the boy in the shower.

He readies the water, making sure it’s not too hot, and even helps Shiro out of his clothes. Keith debates on staying, getting as far as grabbing the soap before Shiro steals it from his grip.

“I’ve got it,” Shiro says. His voice sounds far away.

“Okay.” Keith takes a step back, his hand gripping the shower curtain. He doesn’t want to leave, but he knows more than anyone the desire to be alone. Respects it even more. Keith closes the curtain halfway to save the floor from the spray and turns around only to hear a soft thud. Glancing over his shoulder, he sees Shiro on his knees with his hands bracing the lip of the tub. His fingers shake against the porcelain curve.

“You okay?” Keith asks. He takes a worried step forward, but the boy’s voice stops him.

“I’m good.”

That is the biggest lie Shiro has ever told, but Keith lets it go.

Keith steps out and heads down to the basement with Shiro’s soiled clothes balled up in his hands. He tosses them into the drier and waits. His hands twitch at his sides so he hugs his arms, but it doesn’t make much of a difference.

Over the soft mechanical rumble of the drier, Keith thinks he can hear Shiro screaming into the drain. He pictures it perfectly: the hot water cascading down a smooth back, hair darker than a starless night clinging to his face, his hands bracing the tub as catharsis rips through his throat and murders the sweet baritone of his vocals. Whether a sinister play of his own mind or not, Keith waits until the noise deceases and waits even longer after that. It makes Keith want to bare his throat to the howling mouths of a pack of wolves.

_He’s just a boy. He’s just a boy._

And then Keith thinks, _I’m just a boy too_.

The only person who ever told Keith that he was enough, the only person Keith ever believed, is falling apart upstairs. And Keith needs more than anything to make Shiro believe those words he once uttered, too.

NOT ENOUGH. NOT ENOUGH.

NEVER ENOUGH.

Keith pulls the clothes out of the drier and heads back upstairs.

 

Keith has never seen a picture of his mother. In fact, there are no pictures in the house at all, not even in his father’s wallet; he knows, he’s checked. He suspects his father either threw them all away or burned them. Keith wouldn’t even be surprised if they were buried in the backyard of a past home. If he had to take a guess, he’d say Arkansas.

With all the fabricated gusto that can be mustered in such a small frame, he tries to tell himself that he doesn’t care, yet each passing year brings with it another truckload of contempt from his drunkard of a father. The “you took her away from me so I’m taking her away from you” card is old and well past its due date to the library. It needs to be shelved and never picked up again. Keith won’t even blow the dust off that piles on top.

Keith can only say sorry so much. The word lost meaning a decade ago. In fact, he doesn’t even think the word ever carried any meaning for his father. It was just a waste of breath.

Shiro is good to him, though. So good and uplifting in ways that are foreign to Keith and leave him reeling for days after. For that and only that does he thank his father because moving here was the best damn thing he ever did in his entire existence as a parent.

“What do you think she looked like?” Shiro asks beside him. They’re lying down on the truck bed, huddled in blankets and staring up at the stars outside of Shiro’s home. Keith traces Andromeda with his eyes.

“Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle but tougher,” Keith says. Shiro chuckles into his ear.

“That’s pretty tough.”

“The toughest,” Keith agrees. “And the prettiest. Dad called her E.T. because she was too pretty to be human.”

Shiro wrinkles his nose. “Like from the movie?”

“No, but that’s what she thought too so she gave him a black eye.”

“Oh my god.” Shiro laughs, and Keith can’t kill his own smile before it takes over.

“They got married a year later,” Keith says. Shiro rolls over onto his side and props himself up on an elbow.

“That’s beautiful and wild, but please don’t re-enact it on me.” He grins and Keith snorts. A warm hand brushes the hair out of his face and caresses his temple. “I can see where you get your spunk from, though.”

Keith leans into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut. “Apparently she was big in the racing scene. Had a best friend named Honey who could instill fear into the Hulk. Or so I heard.” Honey never rang as a name to be intimidated by, and Keith had his doubts, but this woman—as told to him—gave fear its true meaning when crossed.

“Yeah?” Shiro breathes. Keith feels his fingers drag down the hollow of his cheeks.

“Yeah.” Keith opens his eyes and his smile fades. He sobers up and looks for answers in man-made constellations but finds none. He curls closer into Shiro’s warmth.

“Do you think she’d be proud of me?” Keith asks. His eyes dart around the black expanse above them, a dying attempt to ease the unwarranted glassy burn of his eyes. When Shiro doesn’t answer, he turns to look at him but locks up. Charcoal eyes burn with the gentle heat of adoration and love, blanketing Keith in their warm embrace.

“I think you would be her entire world,” he says. Keith doesn’t know what to say. He feels the insufferable needle pricks behind his eyes again.

“Thank you,” Keith whispers. He turns his head and kisses the pad of Shiro’s thumb. “I just wish I inherited something from her physically. All I got was my dad’s looks.”

Keith supposes that’s hard to discern fully since he has no idea what she looked like beyond hair colour, but he has seen old pictures of his dad. The resemblance is striking. Though, Keith feels safe in the assumption that if he had looked like his mother, his father’s ill treatment toward him would be ten times worse.

“You’re wrong,” Shiro says. He smooths his thumb over the crest of Keith’s cheek. “You have her eyes.”

 

NOT ENOUGH.

 

When Shiro leaves, Keith’s heart splits down the middle and weeds grow in the crevice.

Shiro misses Christmas.

He misses a lot more than just that: Thanksgiving, Homecoming, Keith’s birthday, New Years. Keith had turned seventeen that October, but who’s counting. Keith keeps a mental tally of every event and holiday missed with traitorous thoughts and a curl of his lip. Shiro finished boot camp about a week into December. He's been calling Keith almost every week to play catch-up and do damage control.

Keith is still mad. It’s a new year, and Keith is still mad—is going to be mad for a long time—but hearing Shiro’s voice over the crackling phone line injects coolant into his heart. With every call he gets, sometimes he thinks he’s going to splinter apart. The ache that settles in his chest after Shiro hangs up spreads like unruly dandelions.

Keith checks the time and shelves his self-loathing and misery for another hour. He pockets his phone, slips on his jacket, and grabs his keys from the dish in the front hallway. He peeks his head into the living room, and only years of exposure keep him from scrunching his nose.

“Dad, I’m having dinner at the Shirogane’s tonight,” he says. His father is sitting in the armchair with god-knows-what muted on the television. The moment is eerily striking to the time Keith learned the not-so-clinical definition of sex. A beer can, most likely empty, hangs in a loose grip. His father doesn’t once look away from the screen.

“The boy left you. Why do you still go over there?” The words are a slurred, jumbled mess that leave Keith wearing a sheen of disgust, but he translates the garble and tries to keep the air in his lungs.

“He’s coming back,” Keith says.

His father grunts. “That’s what they all say.” He brings the can up to his mouth and frowns at its empty contents. His fingers crush the aluminum like a stress toy. Keith locks his jaw.

“Do you even care?”

A pensive pause as the man admires the crumpled can. “No.”

Keith watches him toss the can to the floor and pick up a new one. There’s a ring of mutilated cans around the armchair, dark stains spreading out beneath them. His father is going to drink himself into an early grave, and all Keith can think about are plans to rip up the beer-soaked carpet the second he croaks.

“I’ll bring you back some leftovers. I’ll be home by eight.”

The door closes behind him and he thinks, _I shouldn’t leave_. He stands in the middle of the sidewalk and stares at the window blinds.

_“The boy left you.”_

_“That’s what they all say.”_

_“No.”_

Keith grits his teeth and gets into his car, slamming the door shut behind him. He can’t jam the keys into ignition and peel off fast enough.

There’s a somber overhanging to the atmosphere of Shiro’s home. Keith has spent enough time in the house to feel comfortable around Shiro’s parents, but what he isn’t used to is the tarped despair. They didn’t lose one son, they lost both, and it took a long time to adapt to that. They still haven’t adapted to it. It’s the strangest feeling, but Keith feels he needs to keep visiting them every week—to help fill the empty rooms of the house before it caves over top of them, Keith included. That, and anything to get away from the burning grip of his father.

Dinner is nice as it always is, a brief escape until Keith has to return home. Shiro’s mother has two plates made, and Keith feels guilty because he didn’t have to ask this time. She just knew. But she smiles at him and sets them to the side when Keith volunteers to help with the dishes.

He gets home after nine instead but thinks nothing of it. Lectures and disdain mean nothing from people who don’t care, if such things even exist at all.

Keith unlocks the door and steps inside, shedding his jacket on the way and dropping his keys in the glazed cactus dish. He can see the blue-hued light bleeding out of the living room and infecting the pale yellow walls of the hallway. When he peers in, he sees his father passed out in the chair right where he left him. Rolling his eyes, Keith ventures into the kitchen to put the leftovers away before he attempts the mess in the room over.

“All right, Old Man. Time for bed,” Keith says. His father doesn’t budge. Keith counts to five and breathes out an exasperated sigh. “Get up, you can’t sleep here.” He nudges the man— _hard_ —with his foot, but he still doesn’t move.

“For the love of—” Keith grabs him to hoist him up, beer cans crunching under the imposing weight of his feet, but freezes when his hand grips bare skin. His father is cool to the touch. Keith’s eyes flicker to a prominent Adam's apple, looking for the throb of a pulse, then for a rise and fall of a chest.

Nothing.

“Oh god,” Keith whispers. “Oh, _god_ —”

Cans clatter beneath his shoes, a cacophony of hatred and disgust scattering across the ruined floor and taking with it Keith’s ability to stand. Tremors caress his hands as he stares at the lifeless body in front of him. His voice mimics his hands as he makes the call for an ambulance.

Heart failure and alcohol poisoning, he’s been dead for two hours. The police ask him if there’s any place he can stay. His thoughts stray to the Shirogane’s, but he shakes his head.

“This is all that I have.”

They let him stay here for the night, both to Keith’s surprise and strained relief. That’s one more night of semi-peace before he’s thrown into the hassle of legalities.

There is no funeral. His father is cremated, and Keith flushes the ashes down the toilet the second he picks them up. Surprising enough to him, his father had him in the will for a potential guardian. Keith thought for sure that he would have been whisked off into foster care for a painful year. Instead, he got stuck with one of his father’s old college buddies. Somewhere along the line, his father cared enough to not let Keith rot in the hands of someone else. Keith tries to feel warm at this notion, tries to find a single ounce of love for the man, but all he finds is the dirt on a forgotten library book that he doesn’t dust off.

His guardian is nice, drinks but is responsible and is the farthest thing from an alcoholic. He has a daughter of his own around Keith’s age. Florona, he thinks her name is. She’s a grade below him, and he doesn’t attempt to get to know her beyond that. Keith asks to stay in his home, to which he’s denied, but he’s told that the house will stay in their possession until Keith’s next birthday. That’s as fair as Keith dreams he’ll get.

Long after death, his father’s words brand him and water the weeds where his heart used to be.

_“The boy left you.”_

_“That’s what they all say.”_

_“No.”_

 

NOT ENOUGH

 

Keith’s visits to the Shirogane’s slim down until his appearance becomes as scarce as Shiro himself. He spends as much time as he can working at Sal’s and saving every penny that he touches. It keeps him occupied without the catharsis soccer season provides.

Then, without warning, he drops out of school.

It’s a long fight with his guardian that he wins in a landslide.

_“This isn’t what he would have wanted.”_

_“He would have traded me for my mom in a heartbeat. Don’t make this about him.”_

Keith has been on the receiving end of every glare in the book, so the one his guardian pins him with doesn’t faze him at all. He watches the man sign the paperwork in apathetic victory. Keith submits it to his school the next day and never looks back.

Until he receives a routine phone call one uneventful Sunday night.

Keith answers on the third ring and brings it up to his ear. “Hey—”

“The hell is this about you dropping out?”

Keith bites his cheek to keep the venom off his tongue. “Wow, Keith. It’s so nice to her your voice again. It’s been what, two weeks? How are you tonight?” It doesn’t work.

“Cut the bullshit, Keith. _Talk_.”

“I’m sick of talking,” Keith snaps. “What’s there to even say? You want me to admit I fucked up? Yeah well, big news for you, Buddy. I am a fuck up.”

“No, you’re not,” Shiro says in a tone so even it makes Keith’s blood shiver under his skin. “Why did you do it?”

“Does it even matter anymore? Who even told you, I thought you’re limited with calls.”

“This isn’t jail, Keith. I’m allowed more than one call every weekend.”

“Well, that’s just fantastic for you, isn’t it?” Keith hates him. He hates him and he hates himself even more.

“Keith, what is going on? Please, talk to me. Don’t throw your future away like this.”

“That’s some pretty big talk coming from you.”

Keith can practically see Shiro lock up on the other side of the line. “This is different.”

“Is it though? One death and suddenly life is too hard for you unless your suicidal mindset is actually worth something?”

“ _Keith_ ,” Shiro breathes. There’s a heavy pause, and Keith knows he fucked up again. It’s what he’s good at. “I won't ask again.”

Deflection is hot on Keith’s to-do list. He can easily change the subject, hang up, or throw another jab—anything to kill what little faith Shiro has left in Keith.

Deflect, deflect, deflect.

“My dad’s dead,” he says instead. His shoes fill with cement and he’s thrown into the sea.

“What?”

“Found him in his chair.” He omits the part about coming home from dinner with Shiro’s parents. It’s the first time Keith has even talked about it since giving his statement to the police and his newfound guardian. It’s both liberating and caging. He grips the iron bars and bares his teeth. “He’s gone.”

“Keith, I’m—”

“Don’t,” Keith says softly. “Don’t.” He hears Shiro inhale deeply followed by an exhale to match. He wonders what Shiro is preparing to say, wonders what he thinks of Keith now. Anything is better than fabricated pity.

“Is this why?” he asks.

“What else would it be?”

“It’s just…you hated him.”

“I did hate him,” Keith says. “I still hate him. I hate him so much yet everything hurts. I feel like I’m bleeding out while the world watches and I don’t know what to do.”

Shiro doesn’t know the right thing to say either, it seems.

“Don’t throw your life away because of him.”

Keith grips the phone so hard he wonders if it will crumple like the cans that haloed the corpse that occupied his living room once. “What life? There is no life, it’s gone. Fuck you.” Adrenaline shakes his legs.

 _Run_ , they say. _Run._

He doesn’t stop there. “You know, it’s funny that someone tells you I dropped out but not about my dad. Keith can lose all of his family no big deal, but heaven forbid he doesn’t stick around for a piece of fucking paper to collect dust in a box.”

“And what about your plans for school?” Shiro bites back, ignoring the rotten meat Keith left as bait for him. “What about getting out of town?”

“You mean _our_ plan for school? Yeah, that went well.”

“You can’t depend on me for your future. Plans change.”

“I guess my plans changed, too,” Keith says.

There’s a sharp intake of breath that static takes a liking to. “It seems you’ve already made your decision.” Shiro’s voice is strained and cold, his last sliver of faith in Keith dead like his brother. Cold and dead and forgotten six feet under.

“You made that decision yourself when you left,” Keith says. He breathes in slowly and shakily, but it does nothing for his voice. Emotion is clear as day in his words. “I was here for you. I was with you every second when Ryou died, but you’re not here for me.”

“Keith—”

“Don’t call back.” Keith hangs up and pockets his phone so he doesn’t break it. He tilts his head toward the sky and yells into the dense air, the sound cutting through the night dew and blending in with the coyotes. Maybe if he’s lucky, they’ll invite him for dinner.

The weeds grow into his lungs and suffocate him.

 

Despite the insistent pleas from friends and even his coach, Keith doesn’t return to school. It seems like such a waste, with only five months left until graduation, but all Keith ever does is waste people's’ time, especially Shiro’s. The name leaves an acrylic taste on Keith’s tongue, but more serious is the gaping hole in his brain from uprooting the boy from his life. There are parts of him that Shiro took that he’ll never get back, clinging to the roots of his influence.

He has to give it to Shiro though, he hasn’t called once.

It stings more than his father’s death. Yes, he hated every inch of him. He was a deadbeat drunk who could barely dress himself. Keith thinks the man even stooped as low as substituting milk for alcohol in his cheerios once. But even after everything, he was a constant. He didn’t do much, and Keith played caretaker more often than not, but he stayed. Shiro didn’t.

Shiro promised Keith forever, and all he gave him was a maybe. Keith is still picking himself up after that betrayal, but the jagged pieces keep slicing his fingers and falling from his grip. Each time they fall, they shatter even further. Soon enough, there won’t be anything for Keith to pick up.

Keith still loves him, though. Every vein, every muscle, even the marrow of his bones, scream for him. Keith loves him, and he hates himself for it. He feels so stupid for being hung up over something as trivial as a boy. Teens get together and break up all the time. Within two days, the heartbroken are fine and they find a new two-week fling, but Keith spent three years with Shiro. He was stupid enough to think they would last, that they had something worthy of lasting. That they would move in together and have their own apartment off in the suburbs, travelling for sports and eventually get two dogs of their own, that they’d grow old and be as happy as the couples in medication commercials.

But as Keith knows more than anyone, sometimes it’s just not enough.

Keith works at Sal’s jumping up from busboy and the occasional waiter to full-time working the floor. Sal was kind enough to give him more work once he dropped out, and he respected Keith enough not to press too hard on the school issue even though it was clear in his eyes that he disagreed with Keith’s decision. That’s more than fine with Keith.

He works until he turns eighteen, then he packs a bag—spending far too long staring at Shiro’s letterman before he pulls it on—and ditches town. If questioned, Keith will say he’s been planning it for a year, the jar of saved tips being his only bit of proof, but it’s more of an in-the-moment bout of impulse. His guardian had talked about his father’s house and eventually signing it over to Keith, and he balked. He still doesn’t fully know why he ran, doesn’t know why that was the catalyst of his breaking point, but by two in the morning, he and his car were gone.

He takes one look down the road that leads to an older house that once held his entire universe. He doesn’t take that road and doesn’t spare it another thought as he makes his way out of town.

No destination is in mind, just far enough where no one will put their nose where they don’t belong. Keith figures two tanks of gas will do the trick. He ditches his phone at a rest stop forty minutes out and buys a cheap prepaid smartphone as the next convenience store he sees. Just enough to act as a makeshift GPS without people blowing up his phone asking where the hell he is or demanding he come home.

Over seven hours, two bags of takis, and a tacky “Welcome to Las Vegas!” sign later, Keith stops running. The orange sun sets the sky on fire as the horizon swallows it whole, and exhaustion encases Keith’s bones in a painful embrace. He’s driving out in the sticks, no life to be seen anywhere save for the occasional desert plant. He parks the regal next to an abandoned shack that he thinks was once a barn, no clue where the nearest rest stop or motel is and no desire to keep looking for one either. He kills the engine and fishes out his wallet thick with cash, counting what he hasn’t already burned through.

The sensible thing would be to stay here. Get a job, live out of his car until he can find someplace cheap to hunker down in, and work until he can make a better plan for himself. As of right now, his impulsive nature is only going to get him so far.

_Stupid._

Keith grits his teeth and smacks his hand against the steering wheel. When his vision blurs as a light sting takes residence in his palm, he hits the wheel again. Fingers seek purchase around the plastic in desperate gropes, tightening until knuckles reflect the moon. He hands his head and thuds his forehead against the wheel.

“Stupid,” he mutters. He squeezes his eyes shut and trembles, lightly banging his head with every syllable to leave his mouth. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” His chest is too tight, he’s too big for his bones, and yet he feels so small. So incredibly small and powerless, and that’s what breaks his reserve.

Keith falls asleep to maybes and ideations of lost lives, huddled against the chilled window. A few hours later, he’s awakened by a loud rap vibrating against his skull.

Keith jolts up and stares out the door window. A man is standing there, peering through the glass. Keith runs a hand through his matted hair and rolls the window down with his best scowl lighting his eyes. The man seems unfazed; if anything, he seems amused.

“Sorry to wake you, but figured better me than a chorus of bloodthirsty drivers. What, with the race starting soon and all,” he says.

Keith narrows his sleep-crusted eyes as he dissects the word. “Race?” Keith sounds like he ate a chunk of pavement for dinner. “What race?”

Realization paints the man’s face, and he quickly looks Keith over as if trying to soak in every detail of his disheveled appearance.

“The street race. We have a few every week,” the man says, all traces of his earlier friendly demeanor replaced with a clipped version dripping with suspicion, handing over information he clearly doesn’t want to. “You’re parked on the side of the track.”

Keith purses his lips. “I’m not gonna rat you out.”

“Right,” the man says. He eyes the car before glancing back at Keith. “Stick around if you want. Race starts in fifteen.” He pats the car with a gloved hand before pushing away. Keith watches him walk back to a crowd of people gathered a few feet away in the clearing. A swift headcount brings him to twelve people. He can’t believe he slept through so many people gathering just a few paces away from him, and it brings forward a sobering thought that perhaps sleeping in his car in a foreign, possibly dangerous city isn’t the brightest plan he’s had to date.

The man who knocked on Keith’s window is straddling a bike and holding a dark green helmet in his hands. He’s conversing with another boy and a girl. Keith watches him talk, focuses on how he throws his head back with laughter, studies to potent liveliness to him. Then, his head whips around and catches Keith stare. A shadow crosses over his face before he looks away, leaning close to murmur something to his friends. Keith muffles a groan and rubs his face.

“Just great,” he says, resting his head against the car seat. It’s going to be a long night.

The guy wasn’t lying. At the turn of one, the road and clearing fills with people. Keith has never seen so much life all at once. Not even counting racers, he’d take a guess that there’s at least three hundred people hugging the sidelines if not more. It beats his school games by a mile. Then again, it is the desert. An entire city and then some could fill it up.

Keith watches the racers line up. He notes that they’re all driving bikes and not cars. He idly wonders why, but the thought splinters into the air when the chorus of motors peak. By fifteen after one, they’re off. Keith can feel the vibrations in his heart. An earthquake could have split the earth open beneath his feet, and he wouldn’t have noticed until he was lying broken at the bottom of the chasm. The roar of the engines fills the cool air, and Keith watches the stream of lights fly away from him.

Keith doesn’t know the routes, but they’re gone for a long time. Restlessness plagues his body, and he taps his foot to an unknown beat as he waits, eventually getting out of his car so he doesn’t feel like a sitting duck. Keith counts fifteen minutes before the telltale grumble of a hot engine assaults his eardrums again and the first few racers drift around the bend, sailing across the makeshift finish line. Keith spots in particular a bulky violet and black bike with a rider that is an absolute beast. He comes in fourth.

The placing must have lost him some serious cash because Keith watches the man rip the helmet off his head and throw it to the ground. A curse falls from his lips, Keith is close enough to hear the resounding crack as the plastic splits against the gravel. Squinting his eyes, he can make out the glint of a nose ring and he almost scoffs at the absurdity. A literal bull.

The man’s glare flits to Keith, who looks the other way at the last second. Keith’s eyes land on the man who knocked on his window. Instead of a glare, he’s wearing a wide grin that threatens to split his face in two. Sweat makes his platinum blonde hair stick to his face in iconic helmet hair. He came in sixth place, but he doesn’t seem upset unlike the rest. The pure thrill seems to be enough for him, and _god_ , would Keith give anything to feel a sliver of that.

The crowd doesn’t stick around, dispersing as fast as they came. Keith stays after though—probably a terrible idea, which Keith is chock full of—as does the blonde man. He catches Keith’s curious stare and gives him a searching look in response. He says something to the girl next to him, handing her his helmet, and then saunters over to Keith.

“Hey,” he says. “Thanks for not calling the police.”

“Said I wasn’t going to,” Keith says, rubbing his arms. “Maybe you should trust people more often.”

The man grins. “Yeah, well. It’s Vegas, buddy. Can’t trust no one.”

Keith snorts. “Fair enough.” The man chuckles and fiddles with his gloves. He stops after he seems to make a decision.

“There’s a race tomorrow at three. Lowman’s. You gonna be there?” he asks. Keith raises an eyebrow.

“Thought you didn’t trust ‘no one.’”

The man’s grin widens. “Yeah, well. You don’t seem like a no one.”

Keith’s heart thuds hard in his chest in warning. He swallows. “I’ll be there.”

“Cool. See ya then. Best get out of here in case the police decide to make a pit stop.” He walks back over to his friends, and within in a minute they’re blending into the shadows of the night. Keith, having nowhere else to go, drives until he deems it safe from a gratuitous visit from the authority. But before he falls asleep, he googles what Lowman’s even is.

 

Turns out that Lowman’s is an abandoned steel mill that went out of business over three decades ago. Something about a faulty boiler that led to more than half of the mill collapsing in on itself. It seems fitting for an illegal race. Keith stays, and soon enough people start to pile in. He sees the man from last night.

“Hey! You made it,” he says. He claps Keith on the shoulder, who stiffens under the touch but doesn’t move away.

“Yeah,” Keith says. The man seems to read the awkwardness radiating from Keith because he releases his grip and even looks a tad sheepish, or as sheepish as his wolfish grin can allow—which isn’t much at all. He scratches his cheek.

“Almost worried you wouldn’t come. Glad I was wrong about you.”

Keith isn’t sure how to respond to that, but thankfully he isn’t given much room to answer.

“Have a name to that pretty little face of yours?” the man asks.

Keith hesitates, and he brushes it off as being caught off guard by the impromptu flirtation. “Akira,” he says. He doesn’t trust giving out his real name, especially if he’s going to be facing the promising threat of prison bars and fines worth more than his net worth simply by standing next to an unofficial track.

The name is a fleeting thought, a faded memory of a great-great grandfather he never knew. A slip of a tongue during a drunken story time, or maybe he made it up himself while spending hours searching fake google databases of the deceased to ease the pit in his chest.

He doesn’t know, but it’s enough.

It’s enough.

“Akira. I like it.” He glances down at Keith’s chest. “Shirogane your last name too or something?”

Ice spreads through his veins and stops his heart. He’s wearing Shiro’s jacket. He looks down and sees the stitched name reflected in the dim lights of the bikes. He pops his jaw and nods.

“Yeah, it is.”

The man smirks and pops the collar of his leather jacket. “Cool. Name’s Rolo. You gonna bet on me tonight?”

Keith grins, and for the first time in a long while, it fits his face.

“Not on your life.”

Keith’s wallet thanks him for not betting because Rolo doesn’t even make the top tier, but the grin he’s wearing makes him look like he just won the grand prize. He beams at Keith, who isn’t shy to approach this time. He thinks the boost of confidence is also aided in the fact that Rolo’s friends from the other night aren’t present. Rolo’s adrenaline and happy demeanor are contagious, and Keith feels giddy in his chest just from being within proximity.

“So what do you think?” Rolo asks, leaning his forearms on his bike with the engine still purring between his legs. Keith shrugs and cocks his head.

“I think you’re full of yourself,” he says. Rolo tilts his head back and howls.

“That’s some pretty big talk for a newbie.”

Keith stutters. “I’m no newbie.” Rolo nudges Keith’s leg with his knee, unconvinced.

“Oh, c’mon, it’s written all over your face. That’s newly discovered thrill, my friend.” Rolo shrugs. “Besides, I haven’t seen your face around these parts before.”

“It’s a big city. There’s no way you know everyone,” Keith says. The boyish grin tilting Rolo’s lips turns into a sly smirk.

“In my line of work, you know everyone who’s a somebody,” he says with a wink. Gloved hands grip steel handlebars and rev the engine. “Tuesday, same time and place. Don’t be late.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

Keith finds himself camping out in a Walmart parking lot for the next few days, stocking up on drinks and junk food to get him through the following waves. He makes it a habit to stop into most places that have a “Now Hiring” sign in the window, at least five applications scattered in the passenger seat of his car. He’s only managed to fill out half of them, quietly avoiding the address sections. It’s going to be a nightmare returning them after he’s filled them all out. He counts down the days until they turn to measly hours before the next race.

Rolo is on the sidelines again, grinning at Keith when he sees him leaning against his car. Keith offers a collective wave to which Rolo replies with a crude gesture. Keith flips him off and can’t bury the chuckle tickling his throat.

This race is the same as the others except for the lone fact that Keith is absolutely insane. And this time, he acts upon said insanity.

Keith sees the bull of a man again. He lost the last race as well, and Keith doesn’t need to see this race to know he’s going to lose this one to his piss-poor racing, too. The guy is barking orders at someone, an imposing air of grandeur surrounding him. Keith can imagine the insults and pointed blame falling from his mouth like aerial bombs. Annoyance is a familiar sensation, boiling beneath Keith’s skin, and it peaks just from watching this guy flaunt. Borrowed guts push Keith away from his car and lead him toward the man, Rolo’s indignant squawk of protest sounding behind him. Keith stops two feet away from the two-hundred pound brick wall. He doesn’t even wait for the man to acknowledge him.

“You accelerate too heavy in your drift so you lose balance and momentum,” Keith says. The man slowly blinks down at him. He is much more intimidating up close.

“What?” he asks. His voice is a deep river at the bottom of a chasm.

“You suck, is what I’m saying.”

The man’s eyes flare with muted rage. “Wanna say that again?”

“Your hearing bad too? I said you’re shit.” Keith nods at the bike. “Let me race in your place.”

Another guy pipes in. “You seriously insult a guy and then ask to race his bike?”

The bull growls. “Who the fuck are you?”

“A better racer than you ever will be,” Keith says. He has no idea where this bravado came from, and he can’t blame it on adrenaline either—the race hasn’t even started yet. He doesn’t know if it’s because he wants to race or fight, but when the man pulls back a tight fist, Keith braces himself for the breaking of a lifetime.

“Whoa, whoa, oh boy. Newbie here didn’t mean it, Sendak. Right?” Rolo grabs Keith by the shoulders and pulls him out of range. His grip on Keith’s shoulder is insistent, desperate even, as he serves Keith his best _“what the ever living fuck?”_ look that he can muster. Keith looks at Rolo and then back at Sendak.

“I meant it.”

“Wow,” Rolo says with a heavy clap to Keith’s shoulders. “You are gonna die.”

“Let him race.”

Keith blinks and looks beyond Sendak’s bulk to see a woman. She’s thin and short, only a hair taller than Keith, but something tells him she could throw him ten meters if she wanted to. Her face is beautiful with hair as bright as the moon cascading over her shoulders. There’s a youth to her face the preaches young twenties, but her silver eyes sing of late thirties, possibly even older. Their intensity pierce through Keith and hold him there.

Sendak whips around in protest. “You going to trust a no-name runt to win a race?”

“His name is Akira, actually,” Rolo pipes in. He averts his gaze with a low whistle when Sendak’s glare hones in on him.

“Apparently we can’t trust you to win a race either,” the woman says. She walks over and yanks the helmet from Sendak’s iron grip and hands it over to Keith instead. “He can’t do any worse than you.”

Sendak scowls but says nothing more. Keith takes the helmet and nods, unable to form words while pinned by the ethereal gaze of chrome.

_E.T._

“I’ll do my best,” Keith finally manages to say.

“Don’t get humble now, boy.” Her grin is sharp as a shark’s.

 

“H’okay,” Rolo exhales after he’s lugged Keith away from the murderous companionship of Sendak. He pulls out his phone. “Can’t believe you evaded one death only to jump straight into another.”

“It’s just a race. It can’t be that bad,” Keith says. Rolo eyes him.

“This isn’t Disney’s Motocrossed, kid. This is dirty and dangerous, not to mention illegal. People get hurt all the time, some even die.”

“No one got hurt the last two races.”

“That’s called a lucky break. A race isn’t real to these guys unless three bikes catch fire and someone’s crying for their mom from the wreckage.”

Keith frowns. “Optimistic.” A map loads on the bright screen, and Rolo drags a long finger across it before pinching to zoom in.

“Okay, so we’re here. The race follows along these roads because they’re the least populated if at all. It’s going to be a wonky eight shape, and you’ll cut the corner of 2nd and Allison to make it back here. Got it?”

“Uh.”

He most certainly does _not_ “got it.”

“Good. Keep your eyes ahead of you and you’ll be fine,” Rolo says. He drops his phone into the breast pocket of his jacket and zips it up. “Ever ride a bike before?”

“A few times,” Keith said. Florona has a dirt bike that she let Keith use once or twice. It can’t be all that different. “I know the basics.”

“That’s all you need to know. You seem like you know your shit. At least, I hope you do since you gave Sendak the finger.” Rolo looks hesitant to leave, as if he’s leaving Keith to his death bed. “Let’s hope it works in your favor.”

“Fingers crossed,” Keith says as he slips the helmet over his head. It’s too big, even after he tightens it as far as it will go.

“Good luck, man,” Rolo says.

“Ditto.”

Sendak’s bike is a beast, fitting for the bull himself. It rumbles to life beneath Keith. There’s something exhilarating about the purr of an engine between his legs on the stretch of road beyond his visor. He can feel the sweat prickling his forehead, a distraction he can’t wipe away. Out of nowhere he thinks, what would Shiro think of him now?

Fuck Shiro, he’s doing this for himself.

Keith revs the engine to dispel the thought, and he hears Rolo laugh.

He’s surrounded by at least two dozen racers, tonight being a bit of a larger race than the last two he had watched. Some of the racers are double his size, others even smaller. Purpose and life’s meaning fall away into the background, instead the stale scent of sweat and his own breath pin him to the present. Everyone is here to race, their identities and baggage meaningless. The thrill is all that matters. Keith is already addicted and he hasn’t even started yet.

His eyes track the movement of the flag rippling in the gentle breeze. A cacophony of hungry engines rev all around Keith, surrounding him, consuming. Heavy vibrations purge his pores and split his cells in half until his body is screaming for reprieve. He needs to move, to fly, to _be_.

The checkered flag shoots down on half of a breath, and Keith forgets to breathe as he lurches forward.

Engines yell into the night, and the wind cuts through Keith’s bones with the ease of butter. Lights surround him like a degenerate halo as he follows the route. The bike is entirely different from Florona’s hand-me-down dirt bike, and Keith’s skills are questionable at best, but he keeps up well.

Rolo wasn’t kidding. The entire escapade is violent and ruthless. He’s seen two people veer off and crash into a telephone pole already. Another person was physically yanked off their bike and thrown off the road. Keith came three inches too close to facing the same fate, but thankfully keeping his own distance has always been a strong suit of his.

The hardest part is keeping to the track. As Keith becomes more in tune with the bike, his confidence takes a major boost. He would have no issue swerving past the others in front of him if he wasn’t depending so heavily upon them for the course. He’s already completely forgotten the route Rolo showed him, so his gut has been leading him for the most part.

For the first time since he bought and fixed up the regal, Keith feels free and painfully alive. Responsibility and mortality are left to the wind rippling his jacket. The thrill of the night pumps through his veins like heroin, and he never wants to come down.

Everyone on the road with him is nameless. No broken identity, no care for a sleepless night, no haunting past screaming on your doorstep for last month’s unpaid rent. Just them and the empty stretch of road. Keith wishes he could feel the wind whipping through his hair.

He’s never felt so at home with a disconnected reality that no doubt has intentions of fucking him over and landing him in a psychoanalyst’s office for a decade. He feels like his muscles could unknit and spiral away like loose ribbons from his bones. He can breathe again, but most importantly he _wants_ to breathe again.

Keith weaves himself out of the ring of racers when they turn the final bend and things become familiar again. He sails across the finish line with sweaty palms and sopping wet hair. He pulls off to the sidelines and rips the helmet from his head, his lungs drinking in the rich, cool air. Rolo isn’t too far behind. He dismounts his bike a few paces back.

“Dude!” Rolo tugs his helmet off and shoves it onto the handlebar. He’s wearing a wide smile that’s boyish and kind. “That was amazing! You’re like a ninja.”

“I only placed third,” Keith says as he eyes the unfortunate racer who wiped out just before the finish line. Out of the corner of his eye, he spots Sendak and the woman stalking toward them.

“That’s better than me and Sendak,” Rolo says a bit too loudly. He falters when he sees Sendak. “I mean, it’s impressive.”

“I would have done better if I knew the track.”

“Do you think that’s all it would take for you to win?”

Keith’s attention swivels over to the woman. If stars could be cold-pressed into a liquid, he thinks that’s what her eyes would be.

Keith nods. “I could do it.”

“Good,” she says, and Keith feels like he just sold his soul at the crossroads. “You can race next weekend. Sendak, make plans to teach him the routes.” She punctuates the demand by turning on her heel and walking away. Sendak looks like someone spat in his stale beer and _still_ drank it. He grunts.

“Meet me at 89 where Friday’s race started. Tuesday, midnight. Don’t be late.” He leaves, grabbing his bike with a possessive death grip, only when Keith gives a neutral nod. He isn’t sure how he feels about Sendak possibly coaching him—alone—but at least now he feels like he has himself something solid. He glances at Rolo who looks just as surprised but also pleased.

“So. Aki.”

“Akira.”

“Akira,” Rolo corrects. He rubs the back of his neck. “Hate to be a downer, but you’ve been living in your car for the past week, haven’t you?” Keith’s stricken expression must have spoken volumes because Rolo’s expression sobers up. “You can crash with me and my roommate for a while, if you’d like. Until you figure out what you want to do.”

Heat spreads through Keith’s face. “I, um. How did you…?”

Rolo gestures behind him at the parked cars. “Colorado license plate. Plus your clothes tell their own story.”

Keith ducks his head to hide his embarrassment, but the damage has already been done. He wrinkles his nose at his rumpled clothes.

“You don’t gotta tell me why you’re here. This place can be cruel to those without a place.”

Keith stutters and clears his throat. “I wouldn’t want to impose. I don’t even have a job or anything yet.”  
  
“Not a problem. We’ll help you out until you get your footing.”

There isn’t much room for argument. Rolo’s already walking him back to the regal. He opens his mouth so say anything, even a small thank you would have been enough, but a loud bang and creak echoes behind them. They look just in time to see someone’s engine burst into flames. It was the poor guy who wiped out earlier.

“Shit,” Rolo hisses. “Meet me at the corner of Broad and 3rd. There’s an old diner there. Get out of here before the cops show up.”

Rolo hops on his bike and rides off. Keith hops into his car to do the same, but he has no idea where the hell he’s going. When he’s a good few blocks away, he pulls off to the side to look up the diner on his phone.

The diner in question is nice and clean. It looks like a more refurnished version of Sal’s, maybe a decade younger. He’s almost surprised that it’s a 24-hour joint, but then Keith remembers that this is the city. Keith swallows down his sudden homesickness, parks his car in the small lot, and steps inside. He spots Rolo immediately. He’s sitting in a booth and talking to a waitress. He looks up and sees Keith, waving him over.

Keith stuffs his hands in his pockets and walks over. He recognizes the waitress as the girl who was with Rolo at Friday night’s race.

“There he is! For a sec, I thought you were going to show me up.” Rolo gestures at the booth, and Keith takes a seat. “Nyma, this is Akira. He’s gonna be staying with us for a little while.”

Keith nods at her when he turns to look at him. Her smile is warm.

“So you’re this ninja I’ve been hearing about,” she says.

“Ninja?” Keith asks.

“It’s what everyone’s calling you.”

“I already have a street name?” And a bad one at that.

“Word travels fast,” Nyma says with a shrug. Keith side-eyes Rolo, who holds his hands up in surrender.

“It’s been, like, fifteen minutes.”

Rolo shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee. “City never sleeps.”

The answer is unsatisfying, but Keith doesn’t press when Nyma hands him a menu. “Oh, no thank you, I’m—”

“Get something,” Rolo says. “You look like you haven’t eaten in days. Plus, I get everything for free.” He adds the last bit with a cheeky grin and Nyma flicks his forehead.

“It’s on the house,” Nyma agrees. Keith’s hands feel clammy as he stares at the golden menu with a red checkered border. He nods after a moment’s hesitation and looks through his options, settling on a burger and fries to match Rolo. Four a.m. be damned.

“Good man.” Rolo nods in approval. Keith feels bare without the menu to occupy his hands. He rubs them over his jeans instead. Clearing his throat, he finds great comfort in the scratched metal of the napkin dispenser.

“Thank you. For everything you’re doing.”

Rolo stops mid-chew. He stares at Keith for ten tantalizing seconds before he waves him off. “Don’t sweat it. You seem like a good kid. Lost, but good.”

“Emphasis on the lost.”

Rolo throws his head back in boisterous laughter. “Welcome to Sin City.”

And sin Keith does.

Keith follows Rolo home to his apartment after the finish their meal. The place is simple and nice. It doesn’t look filthy or full of holes, but it’s too nice for a diner’s wage to afford. Rolo apologetically shows him the couch where he’ll be sleeping and piles it up with blankets and pillows. And somehow, that escalates to Keith kneeling between Rolo’s legs and sucking him dry.

“How old are you?” Rolo had asked between messy kisses.

“Old enough.”

“Works for me.”

It was purely cathartic, instinctual sex that burned through Keith’s bones, and he couldn’t stop. Rolo had made a joked that sex doesn’t constitute as good rent, but he seemed perfectly fine with using Keith’s mouth as a personal cock sleeve. Keith doesn’t mind either, though. It takes his mind out of the past and keeps him in the hot, brutal present.

He likes it here.  
  
  
  
Keith meets with Sendak that following Tuesday. The man was waiting for him, leaning against the hood of a sleek car. If Keith’s completely honest with himself, he’s surprised the guy could even fit in a vehicle that small. When Keith approaches him, Sendak raises his chin.

“You came,” he says.

“I said I would.”

Sendak grunts. He seems to approve of the answer. He reaches back into the car and pulls out a swaddle of black.

“Here.” He throws it at Keith who’s barely close enough to keep it from falling into the dirt. He holds it in front of him and feels his heart grow cold.

It’s a beautiful leather jacket— _real_ leather, too. Keith can smell the rich scent emitting from the fabric. He lowers it from his line of sight.

“What’s this for?”

“You really plan on racing without proper gear?” Sendak asks. “Don’t be stupid. Ditch the pre-school letterman.”

Sendak turns away to rustle through something in his car, leaving Keith to his own makeshift burial. Keith looks down at the black and silver jacket encasing his arms. The sleeves are big and constantly swallow his hands, and the length goes long past his hips. But most notable is the name etched over the breast. Keith purses his lips and tightens his grip on the leather jacket.

Slowly, he pulls the letterman off. He takes one last look at the name written in silver, feels the demons sinking their talons into his flesh and tearing his heartstrings apart, and then tosses the jacket into the backseat of his car. He tugs the new leather on and revels in the nice fit. He’d grow into it nicely, he thinks.

Keith idly wonders what Shiro’s street name would have been.

_Ghost._


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this out of character? Totally.   
> Do I care? Not at all.
> 
>  
> 
> Beta'd by me, all mistakes are mine.

“Ninja” sticks to Keith like a second skin, and he despises it. Names are important—a vague summary slapped onto a person in a feeble attempt of identification. It tells people who you are without them knowing anything except for a few syllables.

Keith understands that the alias is important for keeping appearance in the race lifestyle, but he’s miffed that the painfully stereotypical trope had to stay. Though perhaps that’s Keith’s own fault for picking the name Akira. That’s a stamp on his heritage more than the slant of his eyes are.

But Storm, Red, Cherry Bomb, hell even something as humiliating as Power Ranger would have been better than the sour staple of racist conjecture.

He’s quiet, he’s fast, he’s good at turning his nose away from what’s actually happening behind the scenes. He’s a joke of what he used to be and is going against everything he once believed in—going against the faith the Shiroganes once had in him. But here he is, parading around a name that no doubt births with it a disdain that isn’t just from mediocre racing skills. It’s the city, though. He can’t expect much else. The more the name sticks, the less he cares of its implication.

He’s an outsider from start to finish.

Six months in and Keith has won more races than he can count, and his ass has been filled to the brim enough times to impregnate half of the city’s population. Sex carries with it a similar thrill to the races, sometimes it’s even more brutal. But if anything that they have in common, it’s that Keith is a nobody by the end and is gone before sunrise.

The woman with starlight eyes is Haggar, he finds out. She’s married to the big guy who runs the whole thing yet never shows his face. According to Rolo, the guy made someone piss themselves just by looking at them. Keith has never met the man, and he’s perfectly fine with keeping that streak for the rest of his time in the city. Rolo also drops the fact that racing is only a fraction of what they do, but Keith never bothers to ask questions. His imagination fills in plenty though.

The small Ziploc bags stashed in the pantry is all the confirmation he needs.

Keith still stays with Rolo and Nyma. He snagged a job bussing tables at the diner with Nyma, and he pulls his weight. He tries not to think about how familiar the motions are to a rundown, homey diner back in middle-of-nowhere Colorado. He succeeds for the most part.

Sendak hates him, but there’s a mutual latent respect between them for their collective skills and demeanors. He was the one who handed him his fake idea with his fabricated name slapped on top after all. Keith at least thanked him for that. Despite their differences, they work well together and help each other improve. Keith would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy jumping Sendak after winning a race.

It’s Keith’s life and it was good. Until it wasn’t.

Friday’s race comes around the bend, and Keith is doing last minute checks on his bike when Rolo calls out from the sidelines.

“Hey, Ninja! Got a visitor.”

Keith looks up and bites the inside of his cheek. The only people he talks to are already here; he has no idea who would be visiting him, but maybe it will save him the search of finding a warm body to occupy the night with after. Keith pushes to his feet and shoves his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, sauntering over.

“Yeah?” he asks, unimpressed. He stops short when he sees a mop of wild honey hair and glasses half the size of their head. It’s the bright amber eyes full of resolution, relief, and diluted disappointment that sucker punches his core, though.

All at once, the cavity where his soul used to live reopens and eats away the pillars of stability made from lies and self-fulfilled prophecies.

“Pidge?”

“Long time no see, Ninja,” Pidge says. It takes every ounce of Keith’s will to not cringe at the name. He side-eyes Rolo.

“I’ll be back in five.”

“Don’t be late.”

“I won’t.” Keith jerks his head over to the clearing sans people, and Pidge shifts toward the makeshift private location. They walk side by side in silence, careful not to brush shoulders, until Keith is certain no prying eyes will eavesdrop. He turns on Pidge with a wild look in his eyes.

“What are you doing here?”

“Funny, that’s what I came out here to ask you.”

“How did you even find me?” Keith asks. Pidge rocks back on the edge of a heel.

“Lance’s cousin had her senior trip here two weeks ago. Said she saw you.”

The simple jab sinks Keith’s stomach with the weight of a rusty anchor. “So you just dropped everything and came out here?”

“Led me to you, didn’t it?”

Keith can’t argue that. Not with the expectation of winning, at least. But he can get angry.

“You wasted your time coming out here.”

_I miss you._

“Why did you leave?”

“I’m not going back.”

_Everything hurts._

“Just answer the question for fuck’s sake, Keith.” Frustration drenches the tenor voice and it crashes into Keith full force. He stops breathing at the syllable of his name. He hasn’t heard it in months. He swallows, and his tongue feels too big for his mouth.

“You know why I left,” he says.

“No, I don’t. Your boyfriend leaves you in the dust, your deadbeat dad dies, and you run away? That’s not the Keith I know.”

“Well maybe you don’t know me—”

“Bullshit I don’t. So tell me, _Ninja_ , why did you throw everything away? These people better than us, is that it? You’d rather fuck your way through life?”

“What life?” Keith snaps. “Everything—everyone—is gone! Nothing matters.”

Through the smoky haze of red, he sees Pidge’s expression shift and it’s game over. The anger dissipates from his veins.

“Glad to see where we rank in your life,” Pidge says. Amber eyes glaze over, and Keith feels as if he’s been doused in icy water.

“Pidge,” he says softly. Pidge waits for him to continue, jaw locked and eyes burning into him.

_Help me._

“Now or never, A!” Rolo yells from the edge of the crowd. Keith blinks back his own tears and pushes them from his throat.

“I have a race to win.”

_Please._

He turns on his heel to keep himself from seeing the resounding reaction that would break his knees and steal his lungs from his chest. He marches back over to his bike and grabs the helmet from the handlebar. When he looks over his shoulder, Pidge is gone.

Gritting his teeth, Keith shoves his helmet on and watches the flag wave in the night breeze.

He loses.

Keith accelerates too heavily on a drift, is too reckless with the current emotional bomb ticking down in his head, and falls hard. He crashes into the shoulder of the road three quarters of the race in, flying from his bike and tumbling into the gravel. Pain stabs through his shoulder blade and jolts down to his wrist. His jeans are torn at the right knee, and he can feel the telltale sting of wetness seeping through the fabric, but that’s the least of his concern. Black smoke plumes from the bike, and Keith curses under his breath. The bike has seen its last day on the road.

Rolo stops behind him and flips the visor of his helmet up.

“Dude, are you okay?”

“Fine,” Keith bites back.

“Not to be that guy, but your bike kind of dictates differently,” Rolo says. Keith grunts and kicks the bike. It gives a concerning creak and suspicious tick. “C’mon, I’ll give you a ride back.”

Keith stares at his warbled reflection in the scratched paint finish on last time before he turns around and swings himself on the back of Rolo’s bike. Back at the finish line, Sendak and Haggar are waiting for them. Sendak looks peeved, but Haggar Keith can’t make heads or tails of.

“Where’s your bike?” Sendak asks.

“I wiped out.” Keith hops off Rolo’s bike. “Be happy you placed at all.” His gaze drifts to the woman and he musters up the guiltiest expression he can possibly conceive. “It’s pretty banged up. I ate pavement hard.”

“We’ll have someone get it,” she says far too calmly for Keith’s taste.

“You’re not mad?”

“Will it happen again?”

“I—no,” Keith says.

“Then no, I’m not mad.” She unfolds her arms from her chest. “We’ll have a new bike for you next time.”

“Thank you,” Keith says. It’s all he can say on the matter. His mind is moving too fast to wrap around what just happened, and every time he breathes too sharply he can feel his shoulder dislodge even more. His answer seems to be enough for her, though. She leaves with Sendak in tow, and within a week he’ll have a sparkly new bike for him to win illegal money with.

This is his life.

When he looks to his right, Rolo is giving him a strange look.

“What?” he asks.

“That is the calmest I’ve ever seen her. Every time Sendak ruined a bike, even just a _scratch_ , she’d rip into him like a present on Christmas,” Rolo says. The words get trapped inside Keith’s head and prod at his skull looking for a way out. He gets back on Rolo’s bike.

“Yeah, well Sendak sucked before me so maybe she just likes me better.”

“I think you’re totally right.”

“Get me out of here,” Keith says. He leans back and grips the edge of the seat.

He keeps looking at the spot he saw Pidge, expecting to see a specter mocking him from the sidelines. He sees nothing but his own stupidity. That voice comes back, haunting the recesses of his mind and getting louder the more is shreds his neurons to dust. This time, it doesn’t fade into black.

NOT ENOUGH.

 

 

Two weeks tread by, and Keith tries to slip back into the routine he’s kept for the past six months. He races, he wins, he fucks. Lather, rinse, repeat. But Pidge and the words thrown at him assault him every waking second of the day. No matter how many races he wins or who’s pulling the hair at the base of his neck, he feels hollow. It’s taking its toll and even though it isn’t currently affecting his performance, it’s only a matter of time before he crashes and burns for real.

Haggar seems to catch a whiff of the brewing fallout because by the end of the second week, she tells him to come back to her place after the race. Rolo gives him a slap on the back with a solemn “Nice knowing ya, buddy” before heading out. Rolo never was one for convincing pep talks.

Keith has seen the inside of Haggar’s place only twice, and that was only so Rolo could use him as a personal cart for what he assumed was that week’s suggestive sell.

It’s a nice penthouse in one of the fancy boulevards, something Keith would imagine a multi-billionaire like would own as one of many vacation homes. Each time that Keith has visited, whether for the keys to his new bike or to drop something off, Haggar’s elusive husband has never been present. At one point Keith was starting to doubt that the man even existed, but one soured expression from Rolo was enough to debunk that theory. He quietly thanks his stars that he’s managed to forgo their meeting for so long.

Keith is sitting in a plush armchair when Haggar hands him a spiked coffee. It should be a bad idea to drink because he’ll be up for the rest of the night, but he takes it with a soft “thank you” and drinks his fill. She sits on the armrest of the chair opposite him and cradles her own mug in her hands. She cuts to the chase.

“You’re thinking of going back home,” she says. Keith chews on the thought of lying and nearly splits open the inside of his cheek. Haggar would know if he lies, so he nods instead.

“I am.”

“Honestly, I’m surprised you stayed this long,” she says. “You never seemed tethered here.”

Keith’s tether is overseas and wants nothing to do with him.

He doesn’t answer. The woman doesn’t seem bothered.

“You’re one of the best racers we’ve had in a long time, but we will make do without you.” It feels like a dismissal, but then she digs a muddy stake into his carotid. “I think you should go home.”

Keith pales and looks down into the murky depths of his coffee. “I understand.”

“You don’t.” Haggar sets her mug on the coffee table. “Someone came looking for you.” Keith nods and feels the guilt swell up in his throat all over. “Someone cared enough to find you, and I think that’s good enough reason to go home.”

She’s right. Everything she’s telling him is was he has been telling himself for days. He needs to go home, but he’s terrified. Of what, he isn’t certain. But Haggar seems that she decided for him.

“Okay,” Keith says. “I’ll go home.”

“Good.”

“I might leave in a few days.”

“That’s fine.”

“I…thank you. For everything.” It feels strange thanking his boos who happens to be married to a notorious kingpin, but he feels oddly safe with her. It reminds him of the Shiroganes in a twisted sense. She eyes him as if he had spoken in another tongue. “You’ve helped me a lot. Rolo says you’re intimidating and that I’d be smart to fear you, but I get along with you just fine.”

There’s an unspoken question settling among the dust particles in the air, and Haggar seems to read it loud and clear. She reaches for her mug and takes a sip.

“You remind me of an old friend. We used to race together ages ago before she left the city. You have her spirit.” Haggar’s lips hover above her mug as she condemns her cover. “And her eyes.”

Keith feels the air crystallize in his lungs.

“E.T.,” he murmurs. Chrome eyes hold him down and cover him in chains.

“What did you say?”

“E.T. You—you’re _Honey_ ,” Keith says. His mind is melting and circling the drain. She stares at him, and then a small, wistful smile twists her lips. It hurts to look at. She peers down at the grains in the floorboards.

“I haven’t heard that name in a long time.” Her thumb runs over the brim of the cup a few times before she pins him with a suspicious stare. “Your name isn’t Akira.”

Keith purses his lips. “No. It’s Keith.”

Her eyebrows lift, and she gives a thoughtful nod. “That sounds more accurate. Akira is too pretty of a name.”

Keith chokes.

“Yeah, thanks.” Keith clears his throat and tries not to look too hopeful. “So, you knew I was her kid the whole time?”

“Not the whole time. At first glance I thought for certain, but your name gave me doubt. She had bad taste.”

Keith’s knee-jerk response is the thought of his gritty father who knew the feel of a beer can better than his own name. Bad taste indeed.

“Can you…could you tell me about her? My dad never…” Keith doesn’t finish the thought. He doesn’t want to pollute her memory with him anymore. He’s wary to ask Haggar, but she seems collected and responsive enough to take away the edge.

“Of course. But you still need to go home.”

Keith smiles. “I will. Promise.” He leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees, eager to hear about the woman he never had the chance to meet. Haggar stands and walks over to a rustic bookcase sitting against the far wall. She plucks an old, tattered copy of _Fahrenheit 451_ from the shelf and opens it. She pulls out a slip of thick paper, a simple four-by-five, and hands it to Keith facedown.

“What’s this?” Keith asks, taking it from her grip.

“A photo,” is Haggar’s cryptic reply. “Can’t have you not see the alien for yourself.”

 

 

Keith leaves three days later with a photo of his mother tucked away in the breast pocket of his jacket. He says his goodbyes to Rolo and Nyma, then apologizing to the diner for such late notice. Family emergency was his excuse. Rolo had laughed and said, “You have family?”

To which Keith smiled to himself and said, “Yeah, I do.”

He hopes he still does at least.

Haggar had given him the photo for safekeeping, and Keith didn’t need to be convinced not to take it. It felt bittersweet now to leave after uncovering a part of his mother’s life, but he did need to go back home. Keith had torn the earth up and left the ground in shambles when he ran for the hills, and now he needs to clean up his mess. Everyone deserved that, even Keith.

_“I’ll be back,” Keith promises._

_“Oh, I know. Your love of the track is too strong to stay away.”_

Keith clutches his jacket further to his chest before he gets in his car and heads off.

Home is a long eight hours from Vegas, but Keith uses the time to organize his thoughts and think about what he’s going to say. Paper crinkles in his breast pocket, and he grips the steering wheel something fierce.

He can do this.

Too many pit stops and bags of fast food later, the scenery starts to bleed into something painfully nostalgic. Pulling into town and familiar territory is its own personal heartbreak. His grip tightens to the point where his knuckles whiten. He stops just outside of a quaint family home, but he stays rooted to the car seat for ages.

Seconds turn to minutes, and once Keith is done sitting on his shaking hands, he clambers outside and makes his way up to the front door. To keep himself from rough two of his waiting game, he barrels his fist to the door before he’s fully up the steps. The knock is louder than it needs to be, but he blames that on cowardice. He hears shuffling behind the door not long after, and then the door whips open to reveal disheveled brown hair and owlish eyes.

“Hey, Pidge,” Keith says, soft and breathless as his lungs stop working.

“Keith?”

Keith shoves his hands into his jacket pockets to anchor him. He teeters on the balls of his feet. “I’m home now. I know I took too long, but I’m back and I’m sor—” He doesn’t finish the thought because a small fist collides with his chest and grabs the front of his jacket. A stricken downward glance at the trembling hand puts him in cardiac arrest. Looking back up feels like a mistake. He’s never seen so much anger bubbling within those amber eyes before.

“You asshole.” Pidge shoves, and Keith follows the momentum. Another punch lands on his chest, and he keeps his mouth clamped shut. Pidge repeats the insult over and over again like a prayer, punctuating each word with a fist until Keith falls on the ground with Pidge not far behind. Eventually, the punches fade into the ether and are replaced with tears pressed into his chest.

“You fucking asshole. Never do that again. _Never_.”

“Never,” Keith agrees. He stares up at the sky as baby blue bleeds into rich magenta and orange. He holds Pidge close and allows himself to feel resounding warmth that reaches his bones again. “I’m sorry,” he whispers into soft hair.

_So sorry._

 

 

Keith cleans up his act and makes amends within the first week of being back. He owes a lot to the Holt’s especially; they saved his house from the bank after his guardian packed up and left. Otherwise, he’d be back to living in his car and couch surfing for however long.

The house is just how he left it: empty and dirty. It screams of old memories and neglect. The first thing he does is rip up the carpet in the living room.

He also made sure to take a special visit to the Shirogane’s after settling back down. Walking up those rickety steps filled his limbs with mercury and bled through his skin. No matter of counting to ten and wringing out his hands could quell the shake of his heart, and his knock was so weak that he was surprised anyone had heard. He couldn’t raise his head when the door opened. A loaded “sorry” was on the tip of his tongue but never spoken as he was pulled into a bone-crushing hug and breathing was no longer an issue.

“Welcome home,” had been uttered into his hair, and his knees felt weak. Keith made it a priority to make amends with them especially.

Keith gets his GED and goes back to Sal’s until he can enter the police track and get his life back in order. It’s an odd choice, given his raucous life in Vegas, but it only seems fitting. That and he doesn’t want to be stuck with Lance more than he already has to be.

Despite leaving the city behind, Keith still feels drawn to the bright lights and entire scene. In the full year that he’s been home, he still makes trips to Vegas every once in a while. He keeps his word: he goes back, but he never stays. Haggar keeps his bike in a warehouse off an exit near an abandoned mill, and for every race he wins his trophy is some stories about his mother. But all over, it’s nice to see them all again. Even if Keith forgets he goes by another name.

He misses the thrill of the race, too. His time on a bike has dwindled down immensely since getting accepted into the police academy, but can’t erase his love for a good run. It’s been about three months since his last visit. This time when he goes and competes, he gets his ass handed to him in a can. He doesn’t wreck his bike—thank god—but he ate maybe a pound of dust from losing so horrendously.

Keith stops his bike a few feet past the finish line and rips the helmet from his head. Sweat packs his messy bangs to his forehead, and he grits his teeth when sweat drips into his eyes. A cursory glance at Sendak tells him that this isn’t new, and if Keith doesn’t know better, he’d say he looked a bit fond.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than show off?”

Apparently Keith doesn’t know better.

Keith dismounts his bike and sets his helmet on the handle. The racer’s back is facing him, but that doesn’t deter his stride forward. He feels Sendak’s watchful gaze burning into the back of his head when he reaches the idle bike. Keith stops at arm’s length, and it isn’t until the victor looks at him does Keith speak.

“You won.” His voice is clipped and distant, but he holds out a hand. “Congrats.”

A black abyss looks back at him, and Keith roots his feet to the ground. He can’t make out any features passed the glossy sheen of the violet helmet. Unnervingly slow, a strong hand raises and clasps Keith’s in acceptance. When he lets go, Keith tries not to retract his hand as if burned. He watches very carefully as the racer reaches up and removes the helmet.

Keith is met with flawless skin and silver hair clipped back. Long, elegant eyelashes flutter and chrome eyes stare back at him with an intense heat. Keith has never met such a pretty face that he wants to break. There’s something infuriating about his beauty.

“See something you like, Darling?”

It was his personality bleeding through his perfect complexion.

“Not at all,” Keith replies with ease.

Lotor hums, entertained by Keith’s blatant show of badly repressed dominance. They stare at each other for a hot minute, and Keith clenches his fist when the man’s lips tug up into a smirk.

“Will you be at tomorrow’s race?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Keith grits out. Turning on his heel and making his way back to his bike, he adds, “Good luck.”

“I’m not the one who needs it.”

Keith finds out the next night that the man was right. Keith eats dust again and feels Sendak’s smug ass grin giving him a migraine. What makes him realize he’s a complete idiot, perhaps more so than Sendak, is when he asks for a rematch. Sendak barks in laughter, and Keith is tempted to key the man’s bike.

His inferiority is driven home when Keith rips his helmet off at the failure of another race and he’s met with the son-of-a-bitch’s grin. Every time, Keith loses to him. Either he’s too slow or messes up on his drift. The guy isn’t even playing dirty from what he can tell. The one time he manages to win, he swallows the condescending praise straight from that wicked mouth.

He learns that the man’s name is Lotor. Twenty minutes after in a precarious position, he also learns that Lotor is Haggar’s son. Talk about awkward. To be fair, he should have recognized the building they pulled up to, but it was dark and he was preoccupied with other things.

Lotor is an asshole while simultaneously managing to be polite and charming, at least both in and out of bed. The mixture is equal parts infuriating as Keith finds himself even more drawn to him for whichever underlying reason. Keith finds it hard to believe he’s never seen or heard his name before, and he’s not hesitant to voice his questions.

“School, darling. This place is too suffocating to stay in for long,” was Lotor’s response. Keith can agree. The city is a watering hole that he constantly dives into. Every visit is a challenge to not fall back into the wavelength of his past addiction, but Keith is resolute. It’s one of the only things he prides himself in.

Only this time, he’s attracted to more than just the opposite side of the law.

A one-night stand turns into ten too many until Keith’s weekends are spent in the vivacious city more than should be healthy. Lotor is a good distraction, and he gravitates toward Keith just as much as Keith does to him. The constraints of their beneficial relationship is unknown to Keith, but it’s comfortable and he doesn’t feel like he’s tightening a noose around his neck.

He may not feel loved, but he feels meaningful. Cared for, even.

Lotor croons at him like a vulnerable kitten when Keith’s kisses turned suspiciously sweet and touch-starved. Lotor tsks when Keith chases after his mouth.

“You’re lonely,” Lotor says. Keith drags his tongue over his swollen lip.

“You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t lonely, too.”

Lotor covers Keith’s mouth with a firm hand and brands his body with his mouth.

 

 

Lotor’s tongue is both pleasurable and capable of verbal evisceration. He’s so observant that it’s more of an inconvenience than anything beneficial. All it takes is one look at Keith and he breaks him down like a chemical reaction.

“You wreak of devastation.”

Keith opens a heavy eye and glares up at the man hovering over him. “And you’re desperate.”

“Your track lines cover your entire body, darling,” Lotor says.

“It’s rude to stare.”

“You didn’t seem to mind before.”

Keith represses a shiver when Lotor lightly traces Keith’s jaw. Sex is one thing, being cut open raw without debriefing is another. Keith isn’t so fond of the latter.

“They broke you and left their mess to the maids.”

“Are you done?” Keith asks. There’s a bit more bite to his words than intended, but tearing into an oozing wound that scabs over infected and ugly hurts in its own volition.

“Not unless you tell me why you’re hanging yourself out to dry.”

 _Because I love him_.

_Because he’s not coming back and I never learned how to breathe without him._

_Because he placed my thumb over a gleaming self-destruct button._

“I don’t know,” Keith says.

“You’re a terrible liar.”

Keith rolls his head toward his shoulder and fully looks at Lotor. Silver hair billows around a long face and smooth shoulder. Lotor reaches out and drags his knuckle down the apple of Keith’s cheek.

“Do yourself a favor and let it go.”

Keith’s bones feel too big for his body. “I’ll let go when you do.” He’s rewarded with a thin smile, and his eyes focus on sharp canines.

“Stalemate.”

Keith can feel his heart getting faster and louder as he stares up at the man. He feels like rotting meat under the desert sun with a circle of vultures hovering above.

“Kiss me,” he whispers, afraid of something he isn’t certain of. But Lotor presses their mouths together, and Keith tries not to splinter apart.

 

 

Lotor helps weed Keith’s lungs and fill the crevice so nothing worse can fester in the fissures. Thorns are harder to uproot and more painful, too. Eventually, Keith stops picking the oozing scab and it scars over. It’s ugly and irritated, but it heals.

He stops thinking of Shiro, and soon the boy with a crooked grin and bright eyes faded from existence. Keith is fine with it for years, even as he re-establishes his relationship with the Shiroganes and blocks out the pictures of said boy. It’s fine. That is until some ghosts come knocking on his doorstep handing over tuna noodle casserole.

When Keith first saw him pulled over on the side of the road, he was beyond bitter. Not only from their messy end, but the fact that Shiro’s constant play of his immunity card was infuriating. He comes waltzing back seeking asylum with a sour attitude that frayed Keith’s progress on containing his temper. He gradually tore at the splitting seam and spilled open, reliving every hurt once dealt years ago.

But he also felt joy.

There were some new, good moments with Shiro that set Keith’s heart racing. It’s the loudest wakeup call he’s ever gotten.

He missed him. Still misses him.

The fact becomes ten times more apparent when he sees him laugh at dinner and married to his water glass because the food was too hot for his bland palette. The homesickness hit him in the gut when he was pressed against a broad chest and could smell his aftershave. And perhaps his reluctance to leave Shiro’s proximity was enough clarity for him.

Keith takes a knife straight to the scar and digs the skin back open. It sends fire through his veins and shreds his muscle, but it’s warm. And with its influence, Keith makes a brash decision.

“I think we should break up.”

Lotor lifts his head and peers down at Keith. He raises an eyebrow when Keith doesn’t offer any more than that. Keith bites his lip.

“Is this because we chose missionary just this once?” Lotor punctuates with a languid roll of his hips, and Keith tries not to break.

“No, I just…” Keith exhales but the sound is more of a desperate moan. He looks at Lotor pleadingly, hoping that whatever he sees is enough.

“You have impeccable timing for these things, darling.” Lotor sighs. He clears his throat and rolls his shoulders. “Guess I should make this count, huh?”

Keith shuts him up with a bittersweet kiss.

 

 

In the back corner of a closet crowded with years of memorabilia, Keith digs out and old letterman jacket from a beaten box. The jacket itself is fairly clean in comparison to the musty cardboard. On the right breast, “Shirogane” is stitched in silver, and it blinds Keith at every angle.

Some ghosts can’t be put to rest.


	9. Chapter 9

Shiro’s body feels like it was hit by a train and his insides thrown in the blender. Football has always kept him fit, but not fit for war. He finds that out the hard way.

No one can really prepare you for your first night, let alone the whole eight weeks of boot camp. The recruiters are polite and all smiles before you sign over your name to the government, but the second you board that bus, your MTI is screaming at you to get moving before you even have the chance to even think about standing.

The drills are some of the worst things he has ever had to subject his body to. By the end of his real first day, he falls face first into his bed and doesn’t move until wake up call. He’s tripped over tires, crawled through mud, ripped the skin from his palms from climbing over vaulting walls, and burnt his skin an angry red. Every morning he wills himself to do it all over again.

By week two, he’s confident he can walk without fear of collapsing. After three weeks of routine unabashed torture, Shiro is used to the drill but he’s tired. It’s not long before he realizes that the tiredness is permanent—it never fades, it’s a bottom dweller leeching the marrow from his bones.

An even more adamant symbol of war than the badges on their sleeves.

Basic training is far more complex than Shiro originally anticipated. Between bruising his knees and caking himself in mud, Shiro is more of a glorified student. He has classes, lecture halls, textbooks that might as well be titled “Crash Course on How Not to Die Within the First 25 Seconds of Take Off”—hell, he even has a lecture on STDs and Cyberbullying. But most notable is the implicit weight of the M-16 assigned to him.

The burden is instantaneous, despite the fact that the weapon has never seen ammo and never will. He hopes he never has to see the day where he permanently trades his replica in for the real deal, but he knows that wish isn’t welcome here.

By the end of the grueling eight weeks, Shiro’s calluses have calluses, and he’s thirty percent closer to imminent death. Graduation offers minor reprieve as he’s shipped off to administration to pick the correct career path for him. There was something almost like a job fair where multiple officers were present from every pathway to help guide the new recruits. Shiro naturally chooses air defense and comes face to face with the man who delivered the sour news that ruined his life.

“You’re a long way from home,” Kolivan says. Shiro doesn’t miss the spooked stares from the other officers pinned on his face. A lone clipboard rests in Kolivan’s experienced grip, his eyes never once acknowledging Shiro since he walked up. Turns out his humiliation hazing isn’t over yet.

“Shirogane.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Why are you here?”

Shiro inhales in the question and exhales his rehearsed fallacy. “To serve my hom—”

“No,” is Kolivan’s clipped reply. “I don’t want your textbook answer.”

Shiro clamps his mouth shut as trepidation swells his throat shut. Kolivan doesn’t give him much opportunity to answer anyway.

“You enlist to be a martyr? Praise from home and a hero title?” When Shiro doesn’t answer quickly enough, Kolivan’s eyes snap up to Shiro and incinerate him. “I asked you a question, cadet.”

Shiro clears his throat and squeezes his sweaty palms. He feels the tension emitting from the other officers who are doing a wonderful job of avoiding eye contact while he is verbally humiliated.

“No, sir.”

Kolivan continues on as if Shiro had given him a point-blank “yes.”

“We don’t reward martyrdom here, boy. People come here because they have nowhere else to go or they’re stupid enough to sell their freedom. People die every day here, and all you get is your name added to a list no one bothers to read.” Shiro fights the wince that tremors through his veins at the underlying implication. “You’re not a hero, you’re just another number. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Shiro’s voice starts to collect fissures like an antique vase that lived through too many moves. Kolivan eases up, but not by much.

“Now, why are you here, cadet?”

Shiro lifts his chin a tad higher to evade the claws of his self-doubt.

“I wish to protect those dear to me and ensure them a safe life. I will carry the burden for those that are not suited for the field,” he answers, voice clear and strong despite the coiling cracks he feels beneath the surface. Kolivan closes his eyes and scoffs.

“A fool in the ranks then,” he says and looks back at the clipboard. “Just like your brother.” The man shakes his head and removes a packet of papers from the clipboard. He hands them over to Shiro. “Fighter Pilots require a bachelor’s degree amongst heavy training in aviation and tech school. You don’t qualify.”

Ice pierces Shiro’s chest and frosts overs his skin as he takes the stack from the outstretched hand. He feels even more lost than he did when he packed up his room for university. God’s hands grip his shoulders and push down. Under the weight, he almost forgets his place and slumps.

“Head over to TACP. It’s not flight but it has little pre-req and it’ll keep you busy. I know you dropped school to come here, but you can use the training period to decide if you want to enroll in ROTC and pursue Fighter Pilot class,” Kolivan says. “I’m not saying no permanently, but I’m saying no now.”

Shiro swallows and nods. “Thank you, sir.”

Shiro feels hollow when Kolivan dismisses him, but he manages his way over to Tacticals and fakes a smile.

 

 

Shiro decides to stick to TACP. It’s field work and he’ll eventually be deployed overseas after he finishes the requirements, but that just means more calluses and mental strain. If he thought basic training was bad, now he has well over a year of grueling training three times worse. To add even more to his plate, he takes up a few online courses for flight theory if only to keep himself from losing his mind to the physical torture.

There are two officers that catch Shiro’s interest often. He remembers seeing them both in Colorado for Ryou’s funeral. He sees them in the canteen on most days and usually he would pay no mind. What sticks him in a rut is that he knows they worked in Ryou’s unit, but now they’re simply step-in advisors for Tactical. Shiro thinks one of them goes by Ulaz.

The thoughts become muddled and crack away at the inside of his skull when they sit with him at the canteen. Ulaz is friendly and talkative, the other—Thace, he learns—is more verbally scarce but not intimidating. It ends up becoming a routine. He doesn’t eat with them every day, but they’ve acknowledged his existence and granted him one of the only pleasant presences he’s experienced since enlisting. Now Shiro can disassemble and clean his gun with them like some big happy family.

Two months pass at this pace. He progresses as a soldier but regresses as a human being. One night in the communal lounge (if he can even call it that), he sits at the table with Ulaz and Thace flanking the other side. Shiro is terse and quiet with a vengeance that transcends any volume known to mankind. Their guns are dismantled before them as they clean each piece, but Shiro is stuck on a loop. He disassembles his replica only to reassemble it in fast, jerky movements as if he’s still being drilled to the bone by Iverson. After his third assembly and when he’s already taken the handguards off for the fourth time does he hear an imposing intake of breath.

“Afraid your muscles are forgetting?” Ulaz asks.

“No, sir.”

“Why the compulsive practice then?”

“Just blowing off some steam,” Shiro says.

“Can you pick something less loud?” Thace asks. His annoyed tone sobers Shiro, and his grip softens.

“Sorry, sir.”

“At ease.”

Ulaz folds his arms and presses them against the table. “You called home yesterday?”

“Yeah,” Shiro says with a frown. He drags his finger along the upper receiver. “Didn’t go as planned.”

“We can tell.” Thace leans back in his chair and adds, “Never play poker.”

“Girl trouble?” Ulaz asks without missing a beat.

“Something like that,” Shiro says to the half-dismantled gun. Shiro makes the foolish mistake of peering up when no one speaks. Ulaz looks at him expectantly, and Thace has an eye pried open in masked curiosity. Shiro’s eyes dart between the two of them. “…what?”

“Is this something that happens often?” Ulaz asks. The end of his question tapers off in warning. Shiro can feel the cautionary tone burrow under his skin.

“No. At least, it can’t happen again,” Shiro says with a bit more bitterness than intended.

“Some relationships don’t last forever, but they shouldn’t end on sour circumstances. It won’t be for a while, but you will relocate overseas.”

“I’m aware.”

“Are you?” Thace asks. “We’ll be in the heart of a war and you’ll be lucky to ever see the greenery of this country again.”

“ _Thace_.”

“Now is not the time to be picking fights. Even your brother knew that.”

Shiro jerks his head up at the mention. Not once have they ever spoken outright about Ryou. Thace seems to accept the fact he dug his own grave and sighs.

“You may look hellishly like him to the point where I think you’re a ghost at times, but he wasn’t half the fool you’re proving to be.” Thace says no more on the matter. He simply picks up his discarded rag and goes back to cleaning the barrel. Shiro isn’t sure what to say or if there’s even a point in a reply. Ulaz leans back in his chair.

“Perhaps a letter would do you good?” he says. “You can collect your thoughts and write them down. Much less scary than another phone call.”

Shiro purses his lips as he rolls the idea over in his head. He weighs his options and decides that taking advice might do him well for once.

“Okay. Thank you.”

Ulaz lifts his hand in polite dismissal and returns to cleaning his own gun,

Shiro looks back down at his mess and reassembles the rifle with careful precision. When he finishes, he sets it down and stops the timer on his watch.

“Time.”

 

 

Shiro stares at the college lined notebook on his desk. The small lamp makes the paper sick with jaundice. The page is notably bare and stares up at him, derides him for his inability to pick up a pen and write.

 _Coward_ , the lonely blue lines mock.

Or perhaps that’s just Shiro’s internalized grief making him go insane. He starts to believe it when all he can hear is Keith’s haunted words repeat in his head like the wails of the damned.

_“You’re not here for me.”_

_“I was here for you, but you’re not here for me.”_

_Not here. Not here. Not here._

Shiro grinds his molars and grabs the pen. He wills it to glide against the paper and form words without any real thought on if they connect well together or not. He only stops when the call for lights out rings through the halls.

With the quickest glance over, he shoves the notebook into his desk and turns off his lamp. He heads to bed and forgets the letter even exists for the rest of his time in training.

When Ulaz asks him if he wrote the letter and sent it, Shiro lies through his teeth. “Good lad. You did the right thing,” Ulaz tells him. The praise embeds needles into Shiro’s throat. They stay for the remainder of his service to this hellish government.

The closest Shiro ever got to visiting another country was bringing home the permission slip for England only for his parents to give him a big fat no. Now, he’s headed toward enemy territory within a month. He’s surprised the year went by so fast for him, but maybe that’s because he feels he has nothing left anchoring him to earth. He just floats on by.

Ulaz and Thace leave with him, and the rest is history to him.

 

 

Shiro remembers the blaring alarms and the flashing red lights, the crackle of destroyed wiring, the weight of a body atop him. All too often has he awoken in the dead of night feeling as if he was still inhaling the dirt he was half buried under for twenty minutes while his blood turned to mud.

The first time he works as a navigator, he crashes hard enough to get the daylights blown out of him. He had been stoked when he was cleared to board the plane and read the radar. It wasn’t piloting, but it was close and he was closer than ever to filling his brothers steel-toed boots. And all it took was five seconds for the dream to crash to the ground with him inside.

Shiro walked away. The pilot didn’t.

Shiro did his research. The pilot was fresh in the ranks, flying only for a year and still a bit green. He was well-liked and skilled, an overall good guy. And Shiro felt the life fade away from him as shrapnel dug into them with the aggression of switchblades.

_“It wasn’t your fault.”_

_“Someone has to take the blame.”_

_“I think you’ve taken enough for the team.”_

With his right arm encased in a cast and dangling across his chest in a sling, he stares at his lone box of belongings that have been so gratuitously packed for him. It sits at the edge of his bed, staring at him a muted eagerness. He doesn’t return the feeling, but he reaches forward and opens the flaps.

On top sits a black spiral notebook that contains pages upon pages full of scrapped drafts of heartfelt apologies and confessions. Nestled in between the pages lies a truce, smudged words, and a question. Shiro takes the notebook from the box and tosses it in the trash without a second glance.

The blame is his and his alone. As it should be.


	10. Chapter 10

_Hey._

_I know you said not to call, but you never said anything about mail. So I wrote you a letter. I know it’s super lame and will take a while to get to you, but bear with me. I just hope you read this. If you don’t, well. That’s fair._

_I know we left things on a pretty bad note. Some things were said that I can’t take back, and the damage has been done. But I do regret how I handled the situation. I had no right to talk to you the way I did and I was pretty harsh. I don’t have an excuse for that, and I’m sorry for not believing in you._

_Death is absolute and terrifying in its own regard. It takes one second to stir the domino effect, and it’s unforgiving. I’ve always had a fear of dying, but only recently have I acclaimed the fear of loved ones dying. It leaves a rift in your life, just a big gaping hole that tries to suck you in and suffocate you. Someone who was always there is gone, and I don’t think we ever truly experience the definition of ‘gone’ until something that is embedded into our being is no more._

_Emotions you didn’t think you were capable of feeling fill your body until you’re about to burst at the seams. It’s the worst imaginable experience, but I think the inevitable emptiness that takes over is the icing on the cake. You feel lost, you become a bottom dweller and drag yourself against the surface until you start to crumble, and you lose yourself. You stop being you while you try and work around the black hole that ripped itself into your dimension._

_It’s so easy to lose your humanity in the current of things._

_You were right. I’m not there for you. I haven’t been in a long time. I can’t really fix that right now since I had this great idea to sell my soul to the country, but I hope I can change that in the future. If you’ll still have me around._

_I’m not the only one who’s lost people, and I seem to keep forgetting that. I’m no expert on the whole death and grieving process, I’m still staggering through it, but I at least had you to lean on. And I left you out to dry under the crows. I am so, so sorry. Both for your loss and for abandoning you. I’ll say this on the phone to you and to your face again as many times as I need to. You don’t deserve to be alone in this and you won’t be._

_I just want you to know that his death isn’t your fault, and he doesn’t define you. You will never be him because you’re so much better than the things he did. You don’t have to stop living just because he did. And to not bark the words of a hypocrite, I’ll try to take my own advice for once too._

_I’ll stop jabbing your ear off now, but I hope we can talk more soon. I miss you and your snores. It’s quiet here._

_Yours,  
_ _Shiro_


	11. Chapter 11

Shiro thought he had recovered from getting off to the feel of Keith pressed against him until he rubbed one out in the shower to the notion of their positions switched. Guilt and a new wave of self-hatred pelt against his back and scald his skin. Shiro needs to get a grip, and not on his cock this time.

It's been almost three weeks since Shiro has felt Keith's heat on his skin. The weekends have been vacant of his company. He said he's had to take up a few extra shifts, but Shiro wonders if it's also because he's nervous about being around Shiro. If that's the case, Shiro doesn't blame him one bit.

Facing Keith should be difficult after adding a new level of emotional constipation to the equation, so Shiro’s grand plan is to make it even _worse_ for them both in order to save his own skin. At the same time, Shiro’s been planning on making the trip since coming back, but he’s been stalling worse than his old 1963 Ford he had in high school. He thinks the company might be nice though.

On a dreary Saturday where the sun peeks through the clouds on occasion, the cliché atmosphere boosts Shiro’s self-deprecation and he soon finds his phone in his hand with Keith’s contact open. He presses “Call” and holds it up to his ear. Keith answers on the fourth ring.

“Hello?” Keith’s voice sounds rough and barely ready to face the day.

“Hey, it’s Shiro. Sorry, did I wake you?” He glances at the clock and winces. Eight in the morning might be a bit too early for some people as most still don’t rise at four-thirty every morning. He hears a muffled groan that sounds a bit like a stretch followed by a few pops.

“Nah, I’m good. What’s up?”

“Just curious if you were busy at all today? I was wondering if you’d be up to go somewhere with me.”

“Sure, I’m game. Where to?”

Shiro bites his cheek. “Grover’s Hill.”

The line becomes heavy with a breathless silence. Shiro would have thought Keith hung up if not for the distant sound of birds chirping. Shiro already feels like his breakfast is going to make a second appearance on the floor.

“Sorry, that was really bold. You don’t have to—”

“What time?”

The air in Shiro’s lungs compresses. “I was thinking sometime after noon. Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Keith says and sucks air through his teeth. “I should visit too.”

“Okay,” Shiro says.

“Two sound okay? I promised Hunk I’d help him out with his car today.”

“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll pick you up?”

“Cool with me.”

“Cool.” Shiro drags his finger over the grain of the aged wooden table. He adds a soft, “Thank you.” He thinks the words catch Keith off guard because there’s a pregnant pause, but Keith’s tone has a gentler touch when he speaks again.

“Yeah. Of course.”

Shiro feels awkward saying goodbye after dropping such a heavy bomb, but he’s at a loss of anything else to say. The status of their relationship is the poorest example of friendship. Keith said himself that they’re not really friends yet, and then Shiro proceeded to fuck his fist to the thought of him.

_Don’t think about that while on the phone with him. Christ._

“So…” Shiro starts off, drumming his fingers on the table. The chirping crescendos in the background accompanied by shuffled steps and the creak of old linoleum floors. “How ‘bout them birds?”

The shuffling stops and he hears a forced huff of breath. “Birds.”

“Yes?”

“This is really painful,” Keith says and then clarifies, “Your attempt at small talk, not the birds.”

“Ouch.”

“Is this what your dates have to put up with?”

“I’ve been told I’m very entertaining in my failures, thank you.”

He can practically see Keith’s eye roll.

“Goodbye, Shirogane. Don’t be late.” There’s a soft click and suddenly Shiro can only hear his own breathing.

He’s smiling for the rest of the morning.

 

 

The extent of Keith’s memory surprises Shiro when it really shouldn’t.

He had picked Keith up on time with a few minutes to spare, and not even after Shiro pulled onto another road does a song he hates blare through his radio speakers. His fingers had twitched against the steering wheel, itching to change stations, but Keith beat him to it. It’s only when Keith is five stations in does he realize the weight of Shiro’s gaze. His eyes dart to Shiro and he looks stricken, heat coiling in Keith’s cheeks that Shiro feels his own mirroring. They share a moment of collected surprise.

Keith swallows and Shiro hears the wetness of his throat.

“You hate this song,” Keith says, then averts his gaze to the gear shift. He doesn’t offer anything else.

“I do,” Shiro says. “Thank you.” Keith nods and leans back in the seat.

The last time Keith changed the station was back in high school when Shiro was sucking him off in the front seat and Shiro couldn’t fuck to a Beatles’ song. Judging by the growing tint in Keith’s cheeks, Shiro wonders if he remembers that too.

The rest of the drive is silent save for the hum of the old rock station and sparse commentary from Keith.

_“The Beatles are decent. Don’t know why you diss them.”_

_“Can’t believe you traded stick for a mom car.”_

_“Did you let your grandma dress you today or something? That blazer is tragic.”_

Keith is wearing tattered jeans that are snug at the hips and loose at the knees. There is a fraying patch that sits high on a thigh, and Shiro keeps side-eyeing the pale skin throughout the whole drive. He could really do with some self-restraint.

When the roads transition from paved to dirt, Keith looks up from his phone and becomes more attentive. A gentle rumble courses through the car and sends vibrations through Shiro’s hands.

“We here already?” Keith asks. Shiro rolls to a stop and puts the car in park. He glances around the lot and pats his thighs.

“Yeah.”

Noise reduces to the jingle of keys as Shiro kills the engine and the clink of their seatbelts. The silence is near deafening when they exit the car.

Grover’s Hill is one of the greenest areas in the whole county, with wildflowers sprouting up at every corner. It’s the liveliest place Shiro has ever seen in his town which quickly becomes ironic once you spot a broken tombstone peering through the flowers.

The entire cemetery is surrounded with a black metal fence complete with a wrought iron gate that isn’t as rusty as Shiro remembers it once being. With a gentle push, the gate creaks open. Keith patiently waits a pace behind for Shiro to take the first step.

For the dreariest day of the season, sunlight pours down on the graves like a sacred land. The cemetery is incredibly quiet. It was unsettling when Shiro was still in school and trying to swim against the current of time. The heaviness that accompanied silence was like a knife to the Achilles tendon. Now, it’s a lover’s embrace.

Shiro drifts through the graves, some marked and some not. His legs remember the path more than he does, which surprises him because he’s only visited the grave a handful of times. He hears Keith trailing behind him and the soft kick up of gravel soothes him into a temporary calm.

Guilt simmers in his chest as he passes all the garnished graves. He never even thought to bring anything.

Shiro stops in front of a gravestone marked with a small American flag that sways in the wind. Keith stops beside him and remains silent as ever. He thinks about how bare the grave is and the guilt turns into a rolling boil.

There’s a small breeze that drifts through the cemetery, caressing their cheeks and rumpling their clothes. It feels almost playful, and it cracks a small grin out of Shiro. He takes the wind as a gentle, “don’t worry about it.”

He sees Keith peer up at him out of his periphery.

“You okay?” Keith asks.

Shiro breathes in sharply through his nose. “Yeah. I think so.” He squats down and hovers over the grave. Weeds sprout at the corners of the stone, small and just starting to curl against the granite. He brushes away the dirt filling the dips of Ryou’s name and exhales the wistful shake from his lungs.

“Better late than never, right?” Shiro asks the grave. Then, he murmurs a loaded, “You fucker.” He feels the telltale sting in his eyes before his vision blurs, but he blinks it away with a fury not unknown to him. The time for tears has passed. Ryou would agree. Shiro can almost hear him grumbling to not flood his grave.

_“Stop being such a downer, you’re cramping my style.”_

Shiro bites his lip and sniffles. He isn’t sure if his imagination is comforting or a clear-cut sign that he needs another therapy session. For now, he goes with the first option. Just this once.

“I’m sorry I left mom and dad alone. I know you’d kick my ass if you could. I’m sorry I bailed on my degree, too. I know you wanted me to be something great, and I let you down.” Shiro smooths his fingers over the stone, memorizing the dips and curves of the name. Sucking in a steeling breath, he gives the stone a final pat. “I’ll be back with some flowers later. Love you.”

Shiro pushes himself up and dusts his hands off on the back of his jeans. When he turns to Keith, he’s pinned by a searching stare. There’s a quiver in Shiro’s chest that isn’t from his heart-to-heart with a carved stone. He clears his throat and nods at the path.

“Lead the way.

The obscure stare turns puzzled. “You don’t need more time?”

“Nah, I’m fine. Thanks.”

Keith nods, confusion still blotting his eyes, but he shoves his hands into his jacket pockets and walks ahead. Shiro has visited the grave with Keith many times over, has even had a few dates in the patch of grass by the granite slab. He knows exactly where it is but always lets Keith take the lead. It was never Shiro’s move to make anyway.

When they reach the spot, Shiro stays just a pace to the side like Keith had done for him. Keith’s voice is stronger than Shiro’s had been just moments before, but Keith has been doing this much longer than him.

“Hey, mom,” Keith says. “It’s been a while. I’m sorry for that. The boy I told you about came back but older and about sixty pounds heavier.”

Shiro snorts. Keith side-eyes him.

“Don’t be rude. Say hello.”

Shiro salutes the grave with a small wave. “Hi.”

“He came speeding back into my life—”

“Wasn’t speeding.”

“—with a bravado that would make you lose your lunch in a heartbeat. Anyway, he started some shit. He’s a handful. Like a newborn puppy, just not as cute.”

“Hey, come on.”

“He’s got his own shit too though. A work in progress,” Keith says. “But one thing hasn’t changed.”

Shiro lifts his eyebrows at the bated pause.

“He’s still shit at soccer.”

Shiro chokes. “For real? Dude.”

Keith rolls his eyes. “I guess he’s still a good guy, too.” He considers the grave for a moment. “And I missed him.”

Shiro thinks he misheard. It was uttered so quietly that he starts to think he imagined it. But then Keith says to the stone, “I miss you, too.” Keith glances as the stone beside his mother’s. “Dad, you’re a no good piece of shit. But I hope you’re happier now.”

Shiro forgets himself and his place for a bare moments and grips Keith’s fingers. Immediately, he feels the pressure of a strong squeeze, and he hangs on with steel assurance. Noise reduces to birdsongs and the gentle rustle of leaves. Their hands communicate through the occasional squeeze, the caress of a thumb across a palm, the gentle tremor of a pulse.

_I’m here._

_Don’t go._

_I’m not, I’m here._

_Stay._

Only when their fingers become tantalizingly close to interlacing does Keith ask Shiro if he’s ready to leave. Their hands break apart, but Shiro’s heart feels lighter than it had when they arrived.

The drive back lacks any conversation except for the radio hosts on the station Keith had tuned to earlier. When Shiro pulls up to the old townhouse, Keith hesitates with his hand on the door handle. Shiro is about to ask if he’s okay when he turns and asks if Shiro would like to come inside. Shiro is certain the shock is palpable on his face, but Keith remains rooted to his seat. Perhaps that’s the nerves though.

Shiro weighs his grievances before he gives a weightless “sure” and puts the car in park. He follows Keith inside and toes his shoes off at the door like old times. He just didn’t know that they’d also be cracking open two six-packs like said old times.

Shiro knows that alcohol is an incubus that loves to influence him in the worst ways, but he still finds himself sitting with Keith on the floor between the couch and coffee table like the heathens they are. Their legs are splayed out in front of them as they toss back beer after beer while talking about everything that doesn’t matter. It’s when they tear open the second six-pack that the light and friendly atmosphere sours into something toxic. Each pop of a beer cap is another demon floating up to the surface and drinking in fresh air. Their voices are bare murmurs, but their words dig into raw skin and tear like barbed wire. The brief truce of their clasped hands seems so far away now.

“Sometimes I still wonder why you left,” Keith says. He thumbs the neck of the bottle and bites the peeling skin on his bottom lip. Shiro watches teeth rip off dead skin and red bead in its place. “You were gone so long that I thought I would never see you again. Then you come back with some tragic story and everyone forgives you. And then there’s me.”

“You don’t have to forgive me,” Shiro says, means it too.

“I do, but you keep ruining everything. I can’t even move on without seeing your face in my head. I can’t stand the sight of you sometimes.”

The implication takes a while to sink in, but when it does, it feels like a ten-inch nail driven into his cerebrum. “What?”

“You ruined me,” Keith half-whispers. “That’s what you wanted, right? Your own property to come back to when you failed.”

“That’s not—”

“I was your sure thing. Would always come running back and forgiving you each time. I’d be your precious little cock sleeve even when you’re so broken that nobody else wants you.”

“That’s how you view me?” Shiro asks. “Just objectification and shitty personality? You’re better than that.”

“And _you_ had a lot of dreams that didn’t involve me. I was your Plan Z.”

“Who’s the self-loather now?”

Keith continues like Shiro never even spoke. “I loved you, and you threw me away.”

“Stop treating this like a one-way street, Keith.” Shiro sets his beer to the side because the taste has long turned to dirt in his mouth. “I loved you too, but you’re the one who broke it off.”

Keith slams his beer against the floor. “Because I wasn’t enough! I couldn’t make you stay. Now you’re back and definitely not because of me.” Shiro doesn’t have a smart remark to that, the alcohol already turning his brain into putty. Keith leans back against the foot of the couch and takes a generous swig of his drink. He scowls at the lip of the bottle. “And the hell did you bleach your bangs for anyway? You look like a 90’s boy band reject.”

Shiro frowns at his own beer and picks at the label. It pills under his nails but he can’t feel a thing. His own voice sounds strange to him when he speaks. “Every time I looked in the mirror, all I saw was him.”

Shiro thinks he went deaf until he hears a sharp intake of air sucked through teeth.

“Shit.” A bottle clinks against the floorboards hastily. “Shiro, I’m— _shit_.”

“Some of the men on the field stayed away from me. Called me bad luck. Others used me as a crutch for their grief.” Shiro smiles to himself but finds no humor in the irony of it all. “One even called me Ryou by mistake.”

“Shiro…”

“I may have left on a stupid, aimless reason because I was chasing a shadow, but I realized too late that ghosts don’t have shadows. I stayed away because I’m just a reminder of lost dreams,” Shiro says. He flicks the bits of label sticking to his thumb off. “I didn’t want my parents to look at me and always be reminded of the pain.”

“So you sold your own happiness?” Keith asks. Shiro feels the iron grip of despair curl around his heart and squeeze. He chokes.

“I just wanted to be close to him. One last time.” He stares down at his scarred hand. “And look where that got me.”

Shiro hears movement and soon chilled fingers press against the underside of his jaw. He looks up, and Keith stares back with grave lines tracing his face. Shiro can feel his pulse throb against nimble fingertips. He stares back up at the man, feeling his eyebrows knit with apparent confusion.

"What is it?" he hears himself weakly utter.

“What do you need?” Keith asks. His voice is smooth, collected, and far too serious. He would give Shiro the sun if he asked him to right now. He would do anything, and that’s too much power for Shiro. He doesn't even want to think if Keith's insistent touch would be as raw and giving if he were sober. Would Keith even be looking at him without the help of booze?

“I don’t—”

“What do you need?” Keith repeats, urgency married to his voice. He's looking for a specific answer, one Shiro isn't sure he knows. Shiro takes one shaky breath as his eyes dart over Keith’s face, taking in every defined feature from the shape of his brow down to the point of his chin. Anxiety flutters up his chest and chills his skin as one word hangs heavy on his tongue. His throat feels swollen so he whispers his answer.

“You.”

Keith’s mouth is warm and wet, and Shiro can still taste the beer that soaked into his tongue. Chapped lips scrape against Shiro’s, and the subtle taste of copper joins the remnants of alcohol in their mouths. Hands cup his neck, thumbs dragging over his jaw and holding him in place.

It’s sloppy and needy, the rhythm they used to have gone from years of distance. Their lips separate with wet pops but Shiro is too selfish to let Keith go very far before slotting their mouths back together. He licks into a hot mouth and swallows a surprised moan.

Kissing Keith again is different from how he imagined it would feel. He kissed him hundreds—thousands—of times before, but they were young then. Now he’s pulling a grown man into his lap and acting like a starved man. It’s aggressive, unforgiving, and terribly humid to the point where he thinks his marrow might begin to simmer. His brain has already turned to mud.

Shiro leans back against the couch and pants against Keith’s mouth. “Fuck.”

“Working on it,” Keith mumbles. He cages Shiro in with his palms pressed against the cushions and settles his weight on Shiro’s pliant lap. A lewd roll of hips in enough to cut the wires in Shiro’s brain, and it’s game over.

“You’re dangerous,” is all Shiro says before he grips slim hips something mean and leaves all reason at the bottom of his empty beer bottle.


	12. Chapter 12

“Ma, please,” Shiro says from where he stands in despair, various clothes draped over his arm. The pile only seems to grow.

“You dress like a bum,” his mother says.

“I _am_ a bum.”

“Not in my house.” Her dainty fingers pluck hangers from the metal rack. “I’ve seen you wear the same rags for months. No more, we’re going shopping after this.”

There’s no hope of winning. Shiro knows his entire afternoon is now at the mercy of his whirlwind of a mother. He sits down on the edge of his bed and drops the pile of clothes in his lap. His mother fusses away in the depths of his closet, muttering nonsense to herself as she rummages his selection of jeans that have long past served their purpose, shirts riddled with holes, and a vast amount of Adidas track pants. He sank to his knees and pleaded with her earlier to leave the latter untouched.

Lifting his hips, Shiro wiggles his phone out of his back pocket for something to do. He squints at the screen when he sees he has a new message. When he reads it, he sorely wishes he hadn’t.

Shiro stares down at the ominous message. The grey bubble of text holds a story that Shiro—even with the proper context—makes him want to bury himself in a city dumpster and call it a life. But even that would be too merciful for him.

_“Cult’s meeting at Sal’s tonight at 7. Don’t be late.”_

He’d consider it a mistake if not for the name of the sender. He blows his hair out of his face and sets his phone down, not worrying about replying because they know he’ll be there. Against his will, but he’ll be there. If only because he doesn’t want his mother to fuss over him well into the night.

His decision is set in stone when a pair of ratty jeans lands on his head and blocks his phone from sight.

 

 

Sal’s hasn’t changed much at all since Shiro last saw it. The upholstery and wallpaper inside got updated from the craggly, old furniture and jaundiced walls, but the rest is all the same. Even the broken, neon pink sign still reads “SAL’S DIE” in the evening. At least the guy’s honest about what the menu does to your arteries.

The food smells the same, amazing and mouthwatering—just like it did all the times Shiro would stop by after practice to flirt with Keith at the breakfast bar, and Sal would slide him a plate. He stopped by so much that eventually the food would already be waiting for Shiro at the exact same spot every time. He was never known to turn down a good meal, athlete’s diet be damned.

 _The good days_ , Shiro thinks, then amends. _These can be good days, too._

He hears the group before he spots them seated at the bar. Their conversation is clear and lively even before he makes his way over.

“You think he’ll show?”

“He’ll be here.”

“He didn’t even reply, how do you know?”

“Because he’d rather show up than have you witch hunt him.”

“I’ll show you a witch hunt—”

“Am I interrupting something?” Shiro asks as he brings up the rear. Lance jolts from his seat and nearly falls off if Hunk wasn’t ready to brace him. Lance whips around and looks at Shiro with blue eyes that always seemed too big for his face. He spreads his arms open wide.

“Shiro! My man, my guy, don’t do that. Nearly pissed myself.” He outstretches a hand and Shiro grasps it, pulling him close and slapping his back in good fuckboy fashion.

“A pity you didn’t,” Pidge says on the stool beside him. “You could’ve gone home. Whatever would we have done then?”

“Watch it, Smalls.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Pidge’s attention turns to Shiro. “So, hotshot. Your ego get bigger than Matt’s yet?”

Shiro snorts. “As if. Kid’s head is higher than the moon.” He ruffles the honey-brown hair and is rewarded with swatting hands. He’s the poster child of innocence when Pidge turns a glare on him.

“You don’t seem too far behind, old man.”

A smile lifts Shiro’s cheeks. “He doing okay?”

“As okay a weirdo like him is capable of.”

“Good to hear,” he says. He catches the kind smile Hunk shoots his way and gives his shoulder a light squeeze. “Hey, man.”

“Hey. Good seeing you again.”

“It was either this or let my mother play dress-up.”

“Reasonable.”

In part, Shiro feels like he’s making rounds at a house party, going around and greeting everyone. Simplifying it down to that makes him a bit tired, but it’s necessary. These were his friends long before he lost a piece of himself. They deserve his company, even if it’s been awhile since he’s had this much company at once. When his eyes eventually find Keith, his chest swells. He drifts a little closer to him and offers a small smile.

“Hey.”

“Expansive vocabulary you’ve got there,” Keith says, but he smiles too. Shiro gets a little lost in the curve of his mouth and gets brave enough to nudge Keith's knee with his own. He catches dark irises looking him over. “You look good.”

“I always look good.”

Keith snorts. “I mean ‘good’ as in ‘fashionable.’”

“Rude.”

“Okay, now that we’ve got the greetings out of the way,” Lance interjects. “Set your ass down because you’ve got a lot of talking to do.” He shoos Shiro to sit. Shiro finds the terrible irony of the fact that the only stool free is _his_. When he glances at Keith, his stare narrows at the doe-eyed look he receives in return.

If he had any pre-existing doubts about Keith’s affliction for tormenting Shiro, they’re all gone now.

It’s a domino effect when he sits down, the first piece tumbling over not even five minutes later when the group’s orders are brought out and set before them. And Shiro be damned, a plate of fries with a mushroom and swiss burger are slid toward him. He looks up to see Sal himself.

That old, wonderful bastard.

“Nice seeing ya again, kid.” Sal’s voice is gruffer and deeper than Shiro remembers it being, but the rusty sound still feels like home. “Ya been back for months and haven’t come in, what’s up with that? Started thinking you went healthy. Or worse, _vegan_.”

Keith snorts into his milkshake. “That’ll be the day.”

“Well? Eat up, pipsqueak,” Sal says. Shiro glances down at his arms.

“Pipsqueak?” he mutters to himself. He drowns in the raucous laughter that encases him, and he too gives in to it.

It’s nice being with everyone again. They've changed so much yet they’re all still the same person, just growing fully into their skin and branching out. With the amount of information thrown at him, whiplash would be expected, but he soaks it all in like a hungry sponge.

Hunk works on cars with Keith in his free time, more as a pastime than a second income. They make a good team. Pidge coaches the high school science olympiad team if only for the excuse to build robots and watch them fight to the death. And Lance—he’s the most surprising of them all. The damn kid proposed to Allura on her last visit home. Shiro hadn’t even known the two had been a thing, but Keith happily filled him in on it all.

Even the details he was sure Lance didn’t want him knowing.

They stay talking and catching up for a good few hours until everyone starts to file out one by one, all except for Shiro and Keith. That was to be expected, but Shiro doesn't mind. Some things have been up in the air all night that were bound to be addressed at some point, and neither of them enjoy public affairs. The clock creeps closer to ten, but they remain comfortably seated in the dim lighting. Their shoulders knock against one other.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Keith asks. Shiro exhales through his teeth.

“It was like getting eaten alive by crabs,” he says, laughing when he gets shoved. “Fine, it was nice. I missed everyone a lot.”

“Yeah, well. You don’t have to miss them anymore. You’re back.”

“Yeah,” Shiro says, inspecting his water glass. “Yeah, I am.” He looks at Keith to find him biting his lip, unknown words trapped in his throat. He wants to ask what’s on his mind, but all he can think about it how satisfying it felt to have that lip between his own teeth.

“So,” Keith says after a while.

“So,” Shiro parrots.

Keith's finger taps against the countertop. “We should probably talk.”

“Yeah, probably. Might be a good idea.”

“That coming from you is terrifying.”

“Screw you.” Shiro draws a smiley face in the condensation on his glass. Some water drips down through the smile and makes it look like it's crying.

It’s been days since the night he stayed over. Waking up on Keith’s couch had been an event in and of itself. He nearly broke his nose on the coffee table when he rolled over in his surprise. It was the one day he slept in past sunrise, and Keith was already gone for the day. A man of the law while being hungover. What a classic.

Shiro still finds it hard to believe how they fit back together so easily. He hasn’t been home for too long, and yet they seem to have swept their years of damage under the rug in a matter two months. Maybe they both have just missed each other so much that they can’t be bothered to keep the war going.

And that’s fine with Shiro. He’s had his fill of wars.

"So much for 'working on it,' huh?"

"We definitely worked on something," Keith says, drawing a chuckle from Shiro.

"Would've been loads better without a hangover." Out of the corner of his eye, Shiro catches Keith nodding in agreement. Shiro glides his thumb along his jaw. “I guess I’ll just cut some corners then. When did you break up with Lotor?”

There’s no cushion to the question, just full, blunt force. Keith shifts on his stool and busies himself with shredding off pieces of his napkin. They fall like snowflakes onto the counter. Shiro watches them become snowbanks.

“Whatever happened to the ‘don’t talk about exes’ rule?”

“Technically, I’m your ex.”

“You could be my ex-ex,” Keith says, and then turns to stone. Colour floods his cheeks, and he ducks his head. The flush travels over his neck and turns his ears maroon. “I, uh. What I mean is, I don’t regret it. Drunk or not, it was fun.”

“It was,” Shiro agrees. “But things were said.”

“Things that needed to be said. Perhaps we could have had a little more class.”

“I think you’re asking for a little too much there.”

Keith laughs, and Shiro is so gone. “Yeah. Maybe.”

Shiro thinks about the pros and cons, _really_ thinks about them, and still can’t even be bothered to hover over the negatives for once. He thinks his therapist might have a stroke when he tells her that bit. But sitting next to Keith—despite the almost disaster of a night that ended with them rutting against each other, years of anguish they put each other through, a goddamn _speeding ticket—_ Shiro feels whole. And it feels so impossibly good to be the cause of Keith’s laughter again.

"So you and Lotor are done?" Shiro asks again. The clarity will do him good.

"Yeah, for a while now."

"Can I ask why?"

The napkin is completely shredded by now, and Keith’s hands have taken to fidgeting instead. He pulls on his thumb and picks at his cuticles. He chances a look at Shiro and shrugs, a small smile showing white teeth.

"You have some pretty big shoes to fill."

A heavy pang stops Shiro's heart dead in his chest. The surrounding sound becomes distorted fast under the weight of confession. Guilt should at least have some presence in Shiro's wake, but all he can feel is flattered and utter adoration. Keith looks back at the piles of destroyed napkin and drags his finger through it.

“I’m not...I don’t expect things to be smooth sailing. We can work it out...if you want to,” Keith says, not once making eye contact. Shiro can almost feel Keith’s buzzing nerves like his own.

“I want to. God, I want to.” Shiro keeps his voice soft and low. “I know there’s a lot we need to work on, but I’m willing to do the labor.”

Keith looks up at him and searches Shiro’s face for any sliver of dishonesty, but it's a fruitless effort. Shiro made his choice a long time ago, starting with containers of leftover food from a meal he never ate. He won’t run again, not from Keith or himself.

Shiro wants him to remember why he fell in love with Shiro to begin with.

Holding a breath, Shiro covers Keith’s hand with his own and meets the man’s gaze head on. He keeps steady and prides himself when his fingers don’t twitch against smooth skin.

“I miss my brother,” he says, “but I miss you just as much.”

He feels the guttural intake of air that chokes Keith, sees all of the emotions filter through dark eyes, tastes the hope that kindles between them like an early summer campfire. Keith’s other hand rests atop Shiro’s and traps him there. It feels like an overdue "welcome home" he’s been waiting a decade for.

“He would be so proud of you. You _are_ something great,” Keith says, punctuating with a sharp squeeze to Shiro’s hand.

And all at once, Shiro has never felt so relieved and heavy at the same time. But above all, he’s happy. That, in itself, is a miracle; he never thought he’d feel that way again.

“Thank you,” he says. Doesn’t think he can say much else. He grounds himself in the gentle caress of a calloused thumb over his ragged knuckles. “So...I guess we’re finally friends?”

That draws a low chuckle out of Keith, the sound dripping in disbelief and overpowering fondness. “I guess we are.”

Or perhaps the loosest definition of friends. In a good way.

“Stay the night?” Keith asks after a beat. Shiro doesn’t even have to think before answering.

“I’d love to.”

Keith smiles, and Shiro finds himself wearing a matching pair. He doesn't feel so afraid anymore.

They’re going to be okay.


	13. Chapter 13

A duffel bag slumped over a shoulder and the cool air hitting sunburnt cheeks, it’s much colder than Ryou thought it would be. Makes sense going from insane triple digits to low nineties. He doesn’t mind it, though. More importantly, there’s a distinct drop in the ratio of how much dirt ends up in Ryou’s lungs back at home than overseas. There’s nothing quite like the clean, warless air of backwater Colorado. The gentle evening breeze follows him as he walks home from the bus stop.

The house stands short and maybe a little lopsided since he last saw it, but it draws a relieved smile from him.

_Home at last._

Ryou scales the rickety steps to the house with more restraint that he currently feels. His boots send shockwaves through the old wood and creaks erupt from the splinters. They cease when he reaches the door. Instead of going inside, he rings the doorbell to his _own_ home and waits like some emotionally disclosed outcast who didn’t get invited to the family reunion that year.

He listens to the cicadas calling in the thrush when the front door finally crack open. First he sees the dark tousled hair and limbs slightly less gangly since he last saw him. The boy looks up and stops short. His stunned silence is enough to draw a grin out of Ryou.

“Hey, Taka.” He raises an eyebrow when Shiro’s eyes graze over the nametag of his uniform. He crooks his finger upward. “Eyes up here, man.”

Shiro throws the door open all the way and stares in a comical fashion, like he’s caught between stepping through the veil to the afterlife or scampering backward. When Shiro trips over the threshold, Ryou drops the duffel bag to the floor before Shiro collides into his chest with a hard thump. His arms wrap around the boy, and he ruffles his hair.

“You’re home,” Shiro states into his chest.

“For the holidays, yeah.” He gives his brother’s back a solid clap, and Shiro pulls back almost instantly.

“You said you didn’t think you’d get leave this year.” His eyebrows are crooked as he scrutinizes Ryou’s face, looking for any fault hidden within the lines of his weary face.

“I didn’t think I would,” Ryou says honestly. “Happy surprises and all.”

It seems to satisfy Shiro, but he suspects Shiro wasn’t really interested in looking too deep. Ryou felt the same too when his commanding officer gave him leave. He practically leapt onto the next flight home.

“Mom’s gonna cry.”

“Mom always cries.”

“Fair point.” They share a smile, and Shiro beckons him in. “C’mon, you look cold.”

“I have skin cancer, not hypothermia.” Still, the breeze is a little chilly for him, and Shiro sees right through him when he hurriedly grabs his bag from the floor.

“At your rate, you’ll be blue in an hour.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He elbows Shiro on the way inside and gracefully toes his boots off by the door. He looks around the kitchen—same as it’s always been but now with the warm scent of a roast sizzling in the oven—and tunes into the television filtering in from the living room. He takes a step forward, but Shiro catches him off guard.

“Hey, Ryou?”

Ryou peers over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“Merry Christmas,” Shiro says with a smile. Ryou huffs a laugh but returns the smile.

“Merry Christmas.”

 

 

Shiro was right. Their mother cried waterfalls.

 

 

The past few years in the service hasn’t made Ryou any less of a dick or attuned to the fact his brother can be a little snot-nosed shithead. So when they ascend the stairs and step into their shared room together for the first time, Ryou stops short in the doorway. Shiro shoots him an odd look and heads to the side of the room covered in sports and NASA posters alike. When Shiro drops onto the bed and Ryou still hasn’t moved, he lifts his chin.

“Are you about to become a Hallmark movie and cry?” Shiro asks.

“No,” Ryou says, the end of the word pitching upward and nestling with the ceiling tiles. He eyes his own bed at the opposite wall. “You didn’t fuck on my bed while I was gone, did you?”

Shiro chokes. “Dude!”

“Because if you did—which ew, you sleazy bastard—those sheets best be changed.”

He watches his brother cover his face and groan something visceral. “Please just kill me.”

“That would be too simple for your dramatic ass.” He narrowly dodges a pillow hurtling toward him. “Rude. Some warm welcome home,” he sniffs.

The equally warm response he gets is a lone middle finger.

Dropping the duffel near the dresser, Ryou walks toward his bed and stops before his knees touch the edge. Lifting the top cover with a precarious pinch of his fingers, Ryou inspects the fitted sheet like a seasoned detective on an late night crime show. He looks over his shoulder, lips pursed.

“...For real though, you didn’t?”

“For fuck’s sake.”

“So that’s a yes? Dude.”

“No! Of course not.” Red streaks across Shiro’s face and down his neck. His ears look hot enough for steam to blow out.

Humming, Ryou looks back at his bed before he plops face down into the pillows. The bed gives a vicious, ear-splitting croak.

“Oh broken box springs, how I’ve missed you.” The words are muffled and unintelligible. A small drool spot spreads across the cotton fibers of his pillow case where his mouth is pressed against.

“I sure haven’t missed them,” Shiro says.

“You would know.” A gust of wind sails through his ear right before a pillow smacks the side of his head. “And I see you still haven’t outgrown your pettiness.”

He takes a moment to inhale the scent of his pillow, which he notes is five times less starchy than the issued sheets on base. The detergent is faded but a few notes of spring flowers and fresh cotton still lingers. Pleased, Ryou rolls over onto his back and stares at the ceiling, his eyes catching trail of the flaming tail of a comet.

“That’s new,” he says, pointing up at the sticker. Multiple stickers, in fact. It looks like the whole solar system was added to the cropping of glow-in-the-dark stars he and Shiro had stuck to the plaster years ago. It feels much less lonely now.

Shiro follows Ryou’s finger up to the ceiling and sobers up. “Yeah, Keith’s idea. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” Ryou says. “I like it. He has good taste.”

“Yeah,” Shiro breathes. “Yeah, he does.”

They fall into a companionable silence that nearly sedates Ryou until the moment becomes too soft for his liking. He quirks a brow at Venus.

“Does that make the sex out of this world then?”

“ _Ryou!_ ”

 

 

Christmas is nice. Ryou missed the last two—treason, according to their mother—so his pile of presents is exponentially larger than anyone else’s. He feels like a twelve year old all over again, more so when he tears open a box and it’s another fighter jet model. What makes him smile isn’t the model itself or that he’s definitely putting it together later, but his name with an arrow pointing to a crudely drawn stick figure in the jet on the box cover.

To which he thinks, Thank God Shiro isn’t going to art school.

Not to his surprise, Keith joins them that afternoon to trade gifts and have dinner with them. The kid still looks pretty lanky since the last time they met, but he smiles a bit more and isn’t as painfully awkward like he used to be. Still some awkwardness to work out of him, he discovers, when he hands Ryou a shiny red gift.

“I didn’t think I’d actually be able to give it to you this year,” Keith says. Ryou gently pulls the box from his hands and eyes the neatly tucked edges of the paper.

“Thank you. You didn’t have to get me anything.”

Keith nods, evidently something else on his mind he’d like to say but stands there fidgeting. Ryou waits for him to speak, but Keith just nods again as if dismissing himself, and goes back to Shiro’s side.

Ryou huffs, biting back a grin and shakes his head. Carefully pulling on the tape holding down paper, he unwraps the gift until a small oblong box rests in his hand. He almost thinks Keith bought him jewelry until he opens it and sees a beautiful pocket knife resting on the velvet lining. The handle was a beautiful maple wood engraved with chrysanthemums. He couldn’t even begin to believe the amount of detail in one slab of stained wood. When he picks the knife up and releases the blade, he’s in awe at the design. He can see all of the folds reflected in the metal.

“Really shouldn’t have,” he murmurs and sets the knife back down. The whole thing screams of hard cash, but he knows it was rude to ask. Still, he figures Keith probably worked hard to get this done, and Ryou is forever thankful. The box snaps shut and he meets Keith’s gaze across the way. He raises the box and mouths a sweet, “thank you.”

Keith smiles, relieved. Ryou pockets the box and subconsciously rubs his thumb over it throughout dinner.

Turns out he’s missed a lot from being overseas, but that’s to be expected. It’s still a bittersweet mouthful to hear though. He’s missed so much of his brother’s life and all the accomplishments he’s accumulated over the years—accomplishments Shiro was there to witness Ryou receiving. But there was no ill feelings emanating from Shiro, something Ryou never even dreams about taking advantage of. He just hopes that when he comes home for good, their relationship will still be easy and fun and he won’t have missed a whole lifetime.

Somehow, even if he did, he still thinks Shiro would forgive him and that fact alone makes his stomach churn.

But aside from his mutinous brain, he has fun catching up over dinner. He’s missed family time and his mom’s cooking. As good as an airman's menu is, nothing can quite beat a mother’s cooking.

Shiro escapes with Keith out the front door while Ryou stays back to finish cleaning up and packing away leftovers. He’s halfway through filling the sink with hot soapy water when he mother holds out a container of food waste.

“Take this out to the compost pile, will you dear?” she asks. After drying his hands, Ryou takes the container and kisses her forehead.

“Of course, Ma.”

A task he soon learns is a mistake.

Ryou opens the door and finds his own brother shoving his cow tongue down the poor boy’s throat. Clearing his throat would be the classic way to go, but Ryou decides to let the storm door slam shut instead and, boy, is it worth it.

Shiro rips away from Keith, a telltale string of saliva connecting their gross, shiny lips, and he gets to bear witness to their faces turning fifty shades of humiliation. Ryou can’t decide if he’s incredibly unfortunate or the luckiest guy alive.

“Ah, young love. Disgusting.” Ryou steps forward and drops the compost into the bucket near the steps, all while maintaining a frighteningly serious stare with Shiro. He can see the sweat rolling down his temples.

“I, uh…” Shiro breaks eye contact first. Keith looks like he’s threatening the floorboards to devour him in one fell swoop. Ryou flits his gaze between the two of them and feels the secondhand embarrassment lashing their backs from here.

“Where’d you learn to kiss like that, huh?” Ryou asks. “Were you trying to find his uvula? I think you might’ve found that and more.”

Keith chokes into his fist. “Okay bye. See you tomorrow,” he says hurriedly and all but leaps off the porch to his car. But Shiro’s betrayed expression is the icing on the cake. Ryou slaps a firm hand between his shoulder blades.

“Seriously though, is his esophagus lined with gold?”

“Oh my god, please go away,” Shiro whispers. He buries his crimson face into his hands. Ryou leans closer to his ear.

“Nope,” he says, popping the ‘p’.

They shuffle back inside, and Shiro rips away from his side to dart upstairs. Probably to douse his face in cold water. Ryou shakes his head and heads back to dish duty.

Being the model brother he is, he catches some downtime with his parents and gives his brother a solid hour to cool down. When that hour is up, he says good night and makes his way upstairs. He cautiously peers into the bedroom and eyes Shiro lounging on his bed with a football in his hands. At least he’s no longer the colour of cinnamon candy.

“Man,” Ryou says and sits down on his bed.

“Don’t even start,” Shiro says. He tosses the balls above his head, watches it spin, and catches it before it stabs his chest. Ryoud grins and grabs the box with the new airplane model.

“Is Keith as traumatized as you were?”

Shiro huffs. “If he never comes back it’s your fault.” He’s smiling though, all gait dissolving into the floorboards. “I just got off the phone with him.”

“That explains the dopey grin.” Ryou sets the hundreds of pieces on his plaid bedspread and reaches blindly for the instructions. A soft crinkle sounds and he laughs in victory, pulling it out of the cardboard. His smile dies to make room for pinched eyebrows and pursed lips as he reads the tiny print and tries to follow along. He rests his hand on the bed only to grimace at the plastic digging into the bone of his palm. “I think you actually bought me a model that takes rocket science to build.”

“Consider it payback for earlier.”

“Now that’s just rude. It was like walking in on a low budget porno, can you blame me?”

“Only you would know what low budget looks like.”

“Yeah, I’m looking at it right now,” Ryou says, pointedly staring at Shiro.

“Shut up.”

Ryou hums and lies down on his side. He grabs what he think is supposed to be the pieces to the mainframe and sets to work, the only sounds in the room being the ticker of the model and the quiet thud of Shiro catching the football.

“You really like him, don’t you?” Ryou asks after a moment. Shiro’s reply is soft to his ears.

“Yeah.”

“You two have been together for a long time now. I’m actually a bit surprised.”

Shiro scoffs. “You calling me a player?”

“Hey, you’re the one holding the ball.”

Shiro spins the football on his finger and watches the white lines blur into earth brown. He skims his fingers over the ridges until the ball comes to a halt. He’s wearing an idiotic grin that’s so wide his cheeks must hurt. “I’m gonna marry him, Ryou.”

Words die on Ryou’s tongue at the admission. His eyes soften. “How ‘bout you just remember his boutonniere for prom first, kiddo.”

Red dusts Shiro’s skin for the second time that night, and Ryou can’t help but keep the jabs going.

“If you’re gonna marry the kid, you best learn how to kiss him properly.”

“He likes my kisses just fine, thanks,” Shiro says with a petulant huff.

“Kissing is not the same thing as deepthroating someone.”

“There was hardly any tongue!”

“That’s not what I saw.”

Shiro narrows his eyes and leans on his forearm. For a brief moment, Ryou thinks the football is about to sail into his face. “I think you should get your eyes checked again because I don’t think you’re fit to fly anymore.”

Ryou places a hand over his chest. “You’re just a ray of sunshine tonight, aren’t you?”

“You scared my boyfriend off,” Shiro says.

“I saved his life,” Ryou amends, “you ungrateful snot.”

Shiro rolls his eyes and flops onto his back again. “Whatever.”

Ryou fumbles with the rest of the plane, getting about halfway through before setting it aside for the night. He clears off his bed and lies back down with his arms tucked beneath his head. He stares up at the ceiling and notes a sticker he missed before.

A black silhouette of a bicycle is slapped over the moon sticker. Something curls in his chest and tugs his lips upward. He reaches into his pocket and drags his finger over the wooden box.

“Hey, Shiro?”

“Yeah?”

“Keith’s a good guy,” he says. “Treat him well. You have my blessing.”

He doesn’t look but he can feel Shiro’s stare, swears he can feel the short puff of air that revives the blinding grin.

“Of course."

 

 

As the holidays come to an end, Ryou’s departure grows closer. A weight settles on his bones and makes his footsteps heavy, but he pushes forward and tells himself he’ll be back again. Then he tells his parents the same thing. Shiro is the hardest to say goodbye to, he finds. He’ll almost be a grown man the next time he sees him.

“I’ll be back in time for graduation, I promise,” Ryou says.

“You know better than to make promises in this field.” Still, Shiro smiles up at him. Ryou rubs his shoulder.

“Keep your chin up, okay? I’ll be back before you know it.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Shiro says. He eyes the bus as it rolls down the street. It stops with a hiss in front of them, the doors unfolding to let people board.

Ryou ruffles Shiro’s hair and laughs when he gets shoved away. He grabs his duffel bag and slings it over his shoulder. “And keep my bed clean!”

He hops onto the bus before he can get kicked in the shin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 11/18/18: Thank you not only to my commissioner but also to everyone who's been following this story at the snail pace I release chapters at. 
> 
> Unfortunately this won't be updated for a while as I now work two jobs and am dealing with some personal issues. Hopefully this won't be the case for long, but currently I don't have the time to dedicate to this story. Sorry again for leaving y'all hanging for so long.


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